V 

. 


C  LIBRARY     j 

UNIVERSITY  OF 
CALIFORNIA 

I.       SAN  DIEGO      j 


THE   UNITED   KINGDOM 


^  -^   o 


THE  UNITED  KINGDOM 


A  POLITICAL  HISTORY 


BY 


GOLDWIN   SMITH,   D.C.L. 

AUTHOR  OF  "THE  UNITED  STATES,"  ETC.,  ETC. 


The  best  form  of  government  is  that  ichich  doth  actuate 
and  inspire  every  part  and  member  of  a  state  to  the 
common  good.  —  PYM. 


VOLUME  I 


ILotttfOtt 
MACMILLAN    AND.  CO.,    LIMITED 

NEW  YORK :  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1899 

All  rights  reserved. 


COPYBIGHT,    1899, 

BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


J.  8.  Cushing  &  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith 
Norwood  Mass.  U.S.A. 


PREFACE 

THE  limited  aim  of  these  pages  is  to  give  the  ordinary 
reader,  so  far  as  was  in  the  author's  power,  a  clear,  con- 
nected, and  succinct  view  of  the  political  history  of  the 
United  Kingdom  as  it  appears  in  the  light  of  recent 
research  and  discussion. 

Among  works  of  special  research  by  which  the  writer 
has  been  assisted,  and  to  the  authors  of  which  his  grate- 
ful acknowledgments  are  due,  are  the  following  :  — 

Freeman's  "  History  of  the  Norman  Conquest  of  England." 

Stubbs's  "  Constitutional  History  of  England." 

Miss  Kate  Norgate's  "  England  under  the  Angevin  Kings." 

"  The  Life  and  Reign  of  Edward  I.,"  by  the  author  of  "  The  Greatest 

of  the  Plantagenets." 
James   Hamilton   Wylie's   "  History  of  England   under  Henry  the 

Fourth." 

Sir  James  H.  Ramsay's  "  Lancaster  and  York." 
Mrs.  J.  R.  Green's  "  Town  Life  in  the  Fifteenth  Century." 
J.  S.  Brewer's  "  Reign  of  Henry  VIII.,"  edited  by  James  Gairdner. 
Francis  Aidan  Gasquet's  "  Henry  VIII.  and  the  English  Monasteries." 
Paul  Friedmann's  "  Anne  Boleyn." 
Froude's  "  History  of  England  from  the  Fall  of  Wolsey  to  the  Death 

of  Elizabeth"  (the  later  volumes). 

Gilbert  W.  Child's  "Church  and  State  under  the  Tudors." 
David  Masson's  "Life  of  John  Milton,  narrated  in  Connexion  with 

the  Political,  Ecclesiastical,  and  Literary  History  of  his  Time," 

Y 


VI  PREFACE 

Samuel  Rawson   Gardiner's   Histories,  embracing  the   period  from 

James  I.  to  the  Protectorate. 

W.  E.  H.  Lecky's  "  History  of  England  in  the  Eighteenth  Century." 
Henry  Jephson's  "  The  Platform :  its  Rise  and  Progress." 
Sir  Spencer  Walpole's  "  History  of  England  from  the  Conclusion  of 

the  Great  War  in  1815." 
William  Nassau  Molesworth's  "History  of  England  from  the  Year 

1830." 

John  Hill  Burton's  works  on  Scotch  history. 
A.  G.  Richey's  "  Short  History  of  the  Irish  People,  down  to  the  Date 

of  the  Plantation  of  Ulster,"  edited  by  Robert  Romney  Kane. 
T.  Dunbar  Ingram's  "History  of  the  Legislative  Union  of   Great 

Britain  and  Ireland,"  and  the  same  writer's  "  Two  Chapters  of 

Irish  History." 
J.  T.  Ball's  "  Historical  Review  of  the  Legislative  Systems  operative 

in  Ireland,  from  the  Invasion  of  Henry  the  Second  to  the  Union 

(1172-1800). 
"  Social  England :  A  Record  of  the  Progress  of  the  People  in  Religion, 

Laws,  Learning,  Arts,  Industry,  Commerce,  Science,  Literature, 

and  Manners  from  the  Earliest  Times  to  the  Present  Day."    By 

various  writers.     Edited  by  H.  D.  Traiil,  D.C.L. 
The  "  Dictionary  of  National  Biography." 

John  Mercier  McMullen's  "History  of  Canada,  from  its  First  Dis- 
covery to  the  Present  Time.' 
The  works  on  India  of  Sir  Richard  Temple,  Sir  W.  W.  Hunter,  Sir 

Alfred  Lyall,  Sir  John  Strachey,  Colonel  Chesney,  and  Sir  James 

Fitzjames  Stephen. 

Particular  acknowledgments  are  due  to  the  admirable 
works  of  Freeman,  Stubbs,  Gardiner,  and  Lecky ;  to  that 
of  Stubbs  with  special  reference  to  the  constitutional 
policy  of  Edward  I.  The  historical  part  of  Mr.  Masson's 
work  also  calls  for  particular  recognition. 

The  author  at  the  same  time  embraces  the  opportunity 


PREFACE  Vll 

of  testifying  to  the  noble  service  which  the  editors  and 
writers  of  the  "  Dictionary  of  National  Biography  "  have 
rendered  to  British  History. 

In  one  or  two  parts  of  the  book  the  author  has  drawn 
on  previous  works  of  his  own. 

The  friends  who  urged  the  writer  to  undertake  this 
task  know  that  it  has  been  performed  by  the  hand  of 
extreme  old  age. 


CONTENTS 

PAGES 

PREFACE v-vii 

CHAPTER  I 
OLD  ENGLISH  POLITY 1-15 

CHAPTER  n 
THE  CONQUEST  AND  WILLIAM  1 16-41 

CHAPTER   III 
THE  SUCCESSORS  OF  THE  CONQUEROR  : 

WILLIAM  II. 42-57 

HENRY  I.  .        . 57-71 

STEPHEN   ......     71-75 

CHAPTER  IV 
HENRY  II.        . 76-105 

CHAPTER   V 
RICHARD  1 106-117 

CHAPTER  VI 
JOHN        .        .        .        .        . 118-144 

CHAPTER  VII 

HENRY  III.      .        .  '     .        .        .        .        .....        .  145-164 

is. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER    VIII 

I- AGES 

EDWARD  1 165-201 

CHAPTER   IX 
EDWARD  II 202-209 

CHAPTER  X 
EDWARD  III 210-229 

CHAPTER   XI 
RICHARD  II 230-244 

CHAPTER  XII 
HENRY  IV 245-254 

CHAPTER  XIH 
HENRY  V 255-260 

CHAPTER   XIV 


THE  WARS  OF  THE  ROSES  : 

HENRY  VI.       .... 

EDWARD  IV 

EDWARD  V 

RICHARD  III 

CHAPTER  XV 
HENRY  VII. 


.  261-267 

.  267-272 

272 

.  273-278 


.  279-300 


CHAPTER   XVI 
HENRY  VIII 301-341 

CHAPTER   XVII 
EDWARD  VI.  .  342-356 


CONTENTS  xi 

CHAPTER  XVIII 

PAGES 

MARY ,        .        .        .  357-366 

CHAPTER  XIX 
ELIZABETH       .        .        . 367-403 

CHAPTER  XX 
JAMES  I.          .        . 404-467 

CHAPTER  XXI 
CHARLES  I. 468-571 

CHAPTER   XXII 

THE  COMMONWEALTH 572-597 

CHAPTER  XXIII 
THE  PROTECTORATE .  598-650 


CHAPTER   I 

OLD   ENGLISH    POLITY 

T?N GLAND  has  taken  the  lead  in  solving  the  problem  of 
constitutional  government ;  of  government,  that  is, 
with  authority,  but  limited  by  law,  controlled  by  opinion, 
and  respecting  personal  right  and  freedom.  This  she  has 
done  for  the  world,  and  herein  lies  the  world's  chief  inter- 
est in  her  history.  She  has  also  had  to  deal  with  great 
problems  of  her  own ;  among  them  that  of  national  unity, 
the  long  postponement  of  which  is  indicated  by  the  pres- 
ent lack  of  any  common  name  except  that  of  the  United 
Kingdom  for  the  realm,  and  of  any  common  name  for  the 
people.  Ultimately  she  became  the  centre  of  a  maritime 
empire,  consisting  partly  of  colonies,  partly  of  dependen- 
cies, and  had  imperial  problems  of  both  classes  with 
which  to  deal. 

The  scene  of  this  political  drama  is  in  two  large  islands 
off  the  coast  of  Europe,  near  enough  to  the  continent  to 
form  a  part  of  the  European  system,  while  they  are  in  a 
measure  independent  of  it,  so  that  their  people  long  pre- 
served an  insular  character  and  history.  The  channel 
between  Dover  and  Calais  has  largely  exempted  England 
from  European  dominations  and  revolutions ;  from  the 
Empire  of  Charlemagne,  of  Philip  II.,  of  Louis  XIV.,  of 
Napoleon,  in  some  measure  from  that  of  the  papacy,  and 
on  the  other  hand  from  the  French  Revolution.  It  has 

VOL.   I 1  1 


2  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

enabled  England  to  act  in  the  European  system  as  a  mod- 
erating and  balancing  power ;  now  upholding  liberty 
against  despotism,  now  order  against  headlong  change. 
Islands  seem  dedicated  by  nature  to  freedom.  They  will 
commonly  be  peopled  at  first  by  men  bold  enough  to 
cross  the  sea,  nautical  in  their  habits  and  character.  In 
later  times,  the  island  nation,  the  sea  being  its  defence, 
will  be  exempt  from  great  standing  armies,  while  fleets 
are  no  foes  to  freedom.  The  British  islands  are  happily 
placed  for  commerce  with  both  hemispheres.  Looking 
forth  across  the  Atlantic  to  America,  they  are  also  happily 
placed  for  colonization ;  but  that  part  of  their  destiny 
long  remained  veiled.  In  the  estuaries  of  the  Thames, 
the  Hurnber,  the  Orwell,  the  Mersey,  the  Avon,  they  have 
ports  safe  from  attack,  though  in  an  hour  of  shame  the 
1667  Dutch  came  up  the  Thames.  Of  minerals,  too,  Great 
Britain  has  good  store,  and  coal  for  manufactures  which, 
with  the  help  of  circumstances,  such  as  the  repression  of 
continental  manufactures  by  war,  have  made  her  the  seat 
of  a  vast  manufacturing  population  with  its  political 
influences  both  for  good  and  evil.  At  the  same  time 
there  is  a  great  breadth  of  land  for  farming,  which  long 
continued  the  chief  industry.  The  union  of  the  three 
industries,  farming,  sea-faring,  and  manufacturing,  pro- 
duced a  character  balanced  in  politics  as  well  as  in 
general  life. 

The  channel  between  Great  Britain  and  Ireland  has 
played  and  is  even  yet  playing  a  momentous  and  fatal 
part  in  their  political  history.  Nature  had  manifestly 
linked  together  the  destinies  of  the  two  islands  and  made 
their  union  the  condition  of  their  security  and  greatness. 
But  differences  of  race,  differences  of  religion,  evil  chances 


i  OLD   ENGLISH  POLITY  3 

and  evil  policy,  combined  with  the  estranging  sea,  long 
defeated  the  behest  of  nature,  and  the  union  is  hardly 
perfect  even  at  this  hour. 

When  the  drama  opens,  the  lowlands  and  the  fruitful 
parts  of  the  larger  island  are  occupied  by  the  race  which 
has  given  the  nation  its  usual  name,  its  general  character, 

its  fundamental  institutions.     It  is  a  Teutonic  race,  and  Fifth 

CGH.~ 
has   come  in  three  swarms,  Angles,  Jutes,  and  Saxons,  tury. 

from  the  northern  coast  of  Germany,  about  the  mouths  of 
the  Elbe  and  the  Weser.  While  other  northern  races 
have  migrated  by  land,  this  race  has  migrated  by  sea,  in 
bands  of  rovers  who  have  probably  first  marauded,  then 
settled,  and  gradually  driven  out  or  enslaved  the  former 
inhabitants.  It  is  strong  and  comely,  braced  by  sea-life, 
picked  by  the  northern  climate  and  tribal  war.  It  loves 
freedom  and  inclines  to  freehold  ownership  of  land.  It 
respects  birth  and  is  divided  on  that  principle  into  eorl 
and  churl,  names  now  widely  parted  from  their  first 
meaning.  Beneath  the  churl  is  the  theow  or  slave,  a 
captive  in  war,  a  condemned  felon,  or  one  who  has  lost  his 
freedom  in  gambling,  which  seems  ever  to  have  been  the 
master  vice  of  the  race.  Tacitus,  who  describes  the  Ger- 
mans in  their  original  seat,  paints  their  character  as 
robust,  though  rude,  and  pure  in  contrast  with  Roman 
license.  According  to  the  same  authoritj1-  there  were 
kings  designated  by  birth,  but  at  the  same  time  leaders 
chosen  by  merit,  a  custom  which  seems  to  foreshadow  the 
hereditary  monarchy  and  elective  premiership  of  the  pres- 
ent day.  The  Germans  had  their  primitive  parliaments, 
in  which  no  doubt  the  authority  of  the  chiefs  prevailed, 
while  the  people  signified  their  assent  to  the  resolution, 
generally  one  of  war,  by  clashing  their  arms.  The 


4  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

tendency  of  the  race,  fostered  no  doubt  by  the  comrade- 
ship of  roving  bands,  and,  in  the  new  country  by  the 
circumstances  of  little  settlements  each  belted  with  its 
zone  of  wood,  was  to  self-government  and  to  local  institu- 
tions, the  spirit,  and  to  some  extent  the  form,  of  which 
has  lived  to  the  present  day.  In  the  assembly  of  the 
shire,  the  largest  local  division,  of  the  township  which  if 
fenced  was  a  burgh,  and  of  the  hundred  which  was  mili- 
tary, the  people  met  under  their  alderman,  or  other  local 
officer,  to  regulate  their  own  affairs.  The  ruler  was  also 
the  judge,  and  public  justice  was  little  more  than  the 
public  assessment  of  vengeance  or  of  compensation  for 
private  wrongs. 

Around  the  English  settlements  or  buried  beneath  them 
was  the  wreck  of  a  province  of  the  Roman  Empire,  ruins 
of  cities  and  villas,  camps  deserted  by  the  legions,  relics  of 
Roman  handiwork,  Roman  tombs,  treasures  buried  by 
fugitives  who  never  returned.  Coming  not  by  land,  like 
the  other  northern  tribes,  but  by  sea,  the  English  had  not 
made  acquaintance  with  the  Roman  civilization,  or  been 
imbued  with  respect  for  it.  Themselves  lovers  of  the 
open  field  and  the  woodland,  they  either  sacked  and  de- 
stroyed the  cities  or  left  them  to  decay.  With  the  cities 
municipal  institutions  perished.  Of  Roman  empire  re- 
mained only  the  great  military  roads  which  traversed  the 
island,  solid  as  Roman  character,  unswerving  as  Roman 
ambition.  Under  the  Empire  the  Britons  had  been  con- 
verted to  Christianity.  This  also  was  destroyed  by  the 
Englishman,  who,  unlike  the  other  tribes,  had  not  been 
visited  by  the  missionary,  but  came  a  heathen  fresh  from 
the  seats  of  his  nature-worship  and  his  war-gods.  Italy, 
France,  and  Spain  remained  in  language  and  religion,  and 


i  OLD   ENGLISH   POLITY  5 

partly  in  institutions,  provinces  of  the  Roman  Empire. 
The  English  nation  and  polity  were  a  fresh  and  purely 
Germanic  birth. 

In  the  Welsh  mountains,  behind  the  Grampians,  away 
in  Ireland,  and  for  a  long  time  in  the  hills  of  Devonshire 
and  Cornwall,  lay  the  remnants  of  the  Celtic  race,  which 
the  Anglo-Saxon  had  driven  from  England,  with  their 
several  dialects  of  the  Celtic  tongue,  their  Celtic  char- 
acter and  customs,  and  in  Ireland  and  Wales  at  least, 
with  the  Christianity  of  Celtic  Britain.  It  was  a  race, 
from  whatever  cause,  whether  congenital  or  of  circum- 
stance, more  emotional  and  mercurial,  less  strong  and 
steadfast  than  the  Teuton,  more  addicted  to  personal,  less 
fitted  for  constitutional  government.  Whether  it  was 
exterminated  where  the  conquest  spread,  or  mingled  its 
blood  with  that  of  the  conquerors,  is  a  question  about 
which  antiquaries  differ.  It  left  its  memorials  in  the 
names  of  rivers  and  mountains,  as  well  as  in  the  hill 
camps  which  told  of  its  tribal  wars,  the  rude  monuments 
which  told  of  its  veneration  of  its  chiefs,  and  the  circles 
which  had  witnessed  the  bloody  rites  of  its  wild  and  dark 
superstition.  Stonehenge  speaks  of  it  on  the  lonely  plain. 
Csesar,  who  subdued  it  in  Gaul,  has  depicted  its  gallantry 
and  its  weakness.  In  the  western  lowlands  of  Scotland, 
also,  remained  a  wild,  primeval  race,  or  mixture  of  prime- 
val races.  The  rebellion  of  1745  and  the  present  agita- 
tion for  Home  Rule  and  Welsh  disestablishment  show 
how  deep  and  lasting  has  been  the  influence  of  this  divis- 
ion of  races  upon  the  politics  of  the  United  Kingdom. 

Combination  against  the  natives  and  predominance  of  455- 
the  stronger  over  the  weaker  among  the  conquerors  them- 
selves in  time  welded  the  little  settlements  together  and 


6  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

produced  the  seven  kingdoms  of  the  Heptarchy  —  Kent, 
Sussex,  Essex,  Wessex,  East  Anglia,  Mercia,  and  Nor- 
thumberland. There  ensued  a  contest  for  supremacy 
among  the  seven.  The  advantage  was  with  those  the 
warlike  spirit  of  which  had  been  sustained  by  the  border 
struggle  with  the  Celts.  Mercia,  the  central  state, 

826  seemed  for  a  time  to  prevail.  But  in  the  end  Wessex, 
the  southwestern  state,  having  embraced  the  country 
between  the  Thames  and  the  Channel,  under  Egbert,  who 
had  seen  Charlemagne,  came  out  supreme,  and  became 
the  foundress  of  England,  of  the  United  Kingdom,  of  the 
British  Empire.  Union  was  made  difficult  and  amalga- 
mation was  made  still  more  difficult  by  intersecting 
forests,  morasses,  and  rivers  of  pristine  volume,  as  well  as 
by  defective  communications,  the  only  good  roads  being 
those  which  had  been  bequeathed  by  the  Roman  engineer. 
Unity  as  well  as  moral  civilization  was  set  forward  by 
Christianity,  to  which  the  king  of  Kent,  who  had  married 
a  Christian  princess  from  France,  was  converted  by 
Augustine,  a  missionary  sent  by  pope  Gregory  the  Great. 

597  The  Kentish  king  heard  the  Gospel  with  an  openness  of 
mind  which  Englishmen  love  to  call  English.  With  the 
king,  the  people,  after  the  fashion  of  tribalism,  passed 
into  the  allegiance  of  the  new  god.  Removal  from  the 
seats  of  their  old  religion,  which  was  largely  local,  had 
probably  weakened  its  hold  and  that  of  its  priesthood. 
From  Kent  Christianity  spread  over  the  other  kingdoms 

627  of  the  Heptarchy.  It  was  borne  to  Northumbria  by 
another  Roman  missionary,  Paulinus,  and  there  wel- 
comed, according  to  a  pretty  fable,  as  a  solution  of  the 
mystery  of  human  life,  which  otherwise  was  like  the 
flight  of  a  bird  through  the  hall  where  the  king  and  his 


i  OLD  ENGLISH   POLITY  7 

lords  were  sitting  round  the  fire,  out  of  the  night  and 
back  into  the  night.  There  were  relapses,  and  there  was  633 
a  stubborn  resistance  in  rude  Mercia,  where  king  Penda 
fought  for  heathenism  and  prevailed  so  far  as  to  win  back 
Northumbria  for  a  time  to  the  old  gods.  But  in  the  end 
he  fell  and  the  old  gods  succumbed,  though  they  left  in 
haunted  tree,  fountain,  and  stone,  in  heathen  fire  festi- 
vals, and  in  general  superstition  the  traces  of  their  reign. 
Northumbria  was  re-converted  at  first,  not  by  the  mis- 
sionaries of  Rome,  but  by  Aidan,  a  missioner  of  the  old 
British  church,  which  had  found  a  refuge  in  Ireland  and  634 
Wales,  and  in  Wales  had  rejected  the  preaching  of 
Augustine.  Roman  unity,  however,  with  the  magic  name 
of  Peter,  the  holder  of  the  keys  of  heaven,  prevailed  at 
the  synod  of  Whitby,  and  Latin  Christianity,  with  the  664 
bishop  of  Rome  at  its  head,  remained  the  religion  of  Eng- 
land. It  united  the  island  to  Christian  Europe  and  to 
whatever  remained  of  the  Roman  Empire  and  its  civiliza- 
tion. It  introduced  in  opposition  to  the  warlike  type  the 
Christian  type  of  character,  the  Gospel  virtues  of  charity, 
meekness,  readiness  to  forgive,  the  saintly  and  ascetic 
ideal,  the  notion  of  sin  against  God,  where  before  there 
had  only  been  that  of  wrong  done  to,  and  avenged  by, 
man,  penitence  and  penance,  with  the  moral  authority  of 
a  priesthood  pretending  to  sacramental  powers.  It  pro- 
claimed the  spiritual  equality  of  the  sexes  and  the  human 
rights  of  the  slave.  To  Christianity  may  be  ascribed  the 
birth  of  learning  and  literature,  of  which,  in  England, 
the  Venerable  Bede  in  his  monastery  at  Jarrow  was 
the  father,  that  national  consciousness  which  prompts  to 
the  writing  of  history,  art  the  offspring  of  religion,  and 
the  beginnings  of  legislation.  For  the  most  part  the  con- 


8  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

version  would  be  skin-deep.  The  ideal  would  be  too 
high.  Love  of  war  and  sensuality  would  hold  their  own. 
Nor  were  the  effects  wholly  good.  Sacerdotal  authority 
is  always  liable  to  abuse.  Asceticism  might  weaken  the 
character  of  a  nation,  which,  to  preserve  its  life,  presently 
needed  all  its  force.  The  monk  had  at  first  been  useful, 
perhaps  indispensable,  as  a  pioneer.  Afterwards  monas- 
teries were  apt  to  become  lairs  of  idleness  and  refuges 
from  royal  and  patriotic  duty.  Formal  penitentials  and 
vicarious  penances  were  made  licenses  to  vice. 

The  Anglo-Saxon  or  English  polity  was  now  complete 
in  church  and  state,  rather,  we  should  say,  as  the  church 
remained  national,  in  state  and  church.  At  its  head  was 
the  king,  who  had  been  raised  higher  above  the  heads  of 
the  people  by  each  successive  extension  of  his  domain. 
He  was  at  once  ruler,  law-giver,  general,  and  judge,  all 
those  functions  being  as  yet  enfolded  in  the  same  germ. 
But  he  was  no  despot.  If  he  governed,  regulated,  made 
high  appointments  in  church  and  state,  granted  the 
public  land,  gave  chartered  rights,  it  was  with  the  con- 
sent of  the  Witenagemot,  an  assembly  of  the  magnates, 
civil  and  ecclesiastical,  which,  with  the  extension  of  the 
kingdom,  had  practically  superseded  the  assemblies  of  all 
the  freemen,  the  distance  being  too  great  for  general 
attendance,  and  representation  being  then  unknown.  A 
king's  personal  ability  would  be  the  real  measure  of  his 
power.  When  he  was  able  the  witan  would  register  his 
will.  The  authority  of  the  witan  was  wider  than  that  of 
parliament  nominally  at  the  present  day,  since  it  extended 
to  executive  action,  to  appointments,  to  foreign  policy 
and  war,  as  well  as  to  legislation.  The  public  land  be- 
longed to  the  nation,  not  to  the  king. 


i  OLD   ENGLISH  POLITY  9 

The  king  was  elected  by  the  witan,  but  always  out  of 
the  heroic  house  of  Cerdic,  and  generally  by  the  rule  of 
male  primogeniture,  though  the  witan,  as  the  exigencies 
of  rough  times  required,  could  sometimes  exclude,  and 
sometimes  depose,  as  the  parliament,  its  successor,  de- 
posed Edward  II.,  Richard  II.,  and  virtually,  though  not 
in  form,  the  second  James. 

In  the  primitive  abodes  of  the  Saxon  rovers  each  chief 
had  gathered  round  him  a  circle  of  followers  to  whom  he 
gave  bread,  arms,  and  clothes,  while  they  shared  with  him 
all  enterprises  and  perils,  fighting  round  him  to  the  death, 
throwing  themselves  between  him  and  the  dagger  of  the 
assassin,  scorning  to  leave  the  field  alive  when  he  had 
fallen.  Gesiths  they  were  called  at  first,  afterwards 
thanes.  Hence,  when  the  chief  had  become  a  king,  grew 
a  new  order  of  nobility,  a  nobility  of  royal  favour  and 
grants,  overtopping  the  old  nobility  of  birth,  and  forming 
the  predominant  element  in  the  council  of  the  nation. 
Aristocracy  was  not  close  or  exclusively  military ;  three 
voyages  made  the  merchant  a  thane. 

In  the  absence  of  a  strong  central  administration  gov- 
ernment must  delegate  its  powers.  The  country  was 
divided,  as  it  still  is,  into  shires,  by  what  process  is  not 
exactly  known.  Subordinate  divisions  were  hundreds, 
which  were  military,  and  townships,  which,  when  fenced, 
were  called  burghs.  Through  the  whole  scale  in  those 
primitive  times  the  political  or  administrative  and  mili- 
tary assembly  was  also  the  rude  court  of  justice.  Over 
each  shire,  and,  where  large  military  powers  were  neces- 
sary, over  several  shires,  was  an  alderman,  who  took  the 
place  of  the  petty  kings  and  is  faintly  represented  by  the 
lord-lieutenant  at  the  present  day.  In  each  shire  there 


10  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

was  a  king's  intendant,  called  the  shire-reeve  or  sheriff, 
who  guarded  the  king's  rights,  collected  the  king's  dues, 
acting  as  a  sort  of  farmer-general,  and  called  out  the 
militia.  The  shrievalty  was  perhaps  the  nearest  ap- 
proach to  centralization. 

The  army  was  the  general  levy  of  freemen,  every  one 
of  whom  was  bound  to  appear  in  arms  when  national 
defence  called,  on  penalty  of  being  branded  as  a  nithing 
or  poltroon.  All  were  bound  to  aid  in  keeping  up  forts 
as  well  as  roads  and  bridges. 

Private  war  was  restrained  by  the  king's  peace. 
Police  was  in  the  rude  form  of  frank-pledge  or  mutual 
responsibility  of  neighbours  or  members  of  the  same  tith- 
ing. Trial  was  by  ordeal  or  by  compurgation,  that  is, 
purgation  by  the  oaths  of  a  certain  number  of  sureties. 
Life  was  guarded  by  the  were-gelt  or  blood-fine  paid  to 
the  kin.  Differences  of  rank  were  marked  by  the  amount 
of  the  were-gelt  and  the  compurgative  value  of  the  oath. 

The  old  English  church,  though  a  direct  offspring  of 
Rome,  was  insular  and  national,  bearing  nearly  the  same 
relation  to  the  state  which  it  bore  after  the  Reformation. 
Rome  was  regarded  as  the  mother  and  centre  of  Christen- 
dom, not  its  mistress.  A  filial  tribute  under  the  name  of 
Peter's  pence  was  paid  to  her.  Wilfrid,  a  high-flying 
ecclesiastic,  tried  to  introduce  high  church  principles  but 
failed.  The  church  had  her  synods,  but  the  king  and  his 
witan  dealt  with  ecclesiastical  as  well  as  with  temporal 
affairs  and  appointed  the  bishops  ;  while  the  bishops,  by 
virtue  of  their  superior  education,  became  here  as  else- 
where in  temporal  as  well  as  in  ecclesiastical  affairs,  the 
counsellors  of  kings.  The  two  swords  were  held  in  the 
same  hand,  the  bishop  sat  with  the  secular  magistrate  in 


i  OLD   ENGLISH   POLITY  11 

the  local  court ;  no  sharp  line  divided  the  two  spheres  or 
jurisdictions.  The  church  had  been  organized,  with  the 
diocesan  and  parish  system,  largely  by  Theodore  of 
Tarsus,  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  who  as  an  Eastern 
divine  with  Roman  tonsure  and  commission  represented 
the  wide  unity  of  Christendom.  In  local  government 
there  was  a  tendency  in  the  ecclesiastical  to  unite  with 
the  administrative  system  which  finally  issued  in  a  parish 
with  its  vestry  at  once  religious  and  administrative,  while 
the  parish  church  with  its  altar,  its  font,  and  its  grave- 
yard, became  the  local  centre  of  social  as  well  as  spiritual 
life.  The  payment  of  tithe,  at  first  voluntary,  or  enjoined 
only  by  religion,  was  ultimately  enforced  by  law.  Besides 
a  bond  of  union  among  petty  kingdoms  imperfectly  con- 
solidated, the  church  with  her  hierarchy  furnished  a  pat- 
tern of  organization.  It  has  even  been  said  that  the  first 
synod  held  in  England  was  the  first  national  assembly. 

Scarcely  had  the  English  kingdom  been  founded  when  794 
upon  it  swooped  the  Dane.  Kinsman  to  the  Saxon,  he 
was,  like  him,  in  his  early  estate  a  sea-rover,  a  heathen,  a 
marauder;  his  raven  was  the  .bird  of  slaughter  and 
rapine.  He  had  a  wild  Scandinavian  religion  of  warfare 
and  destruction,  with  a  paradise  of  alternate  combat 
and  wassail  for  the  warrior  in  Odin's  hall.  His  heathen 
rage  was  specially  directed  against  church  and  monastery. 
Christianity,  pn  the  other  hand,  in  the  absence  of  a 
strong  feeling  of  patriotism,  was  the  bond  and  rallying 
cry  of  national  defence.  In  this  way  it  made  up  for  any- 
thing that  it  might  have  done  by  its  asceticism  or  quietism 
to  enervate  and  disarm.  Made  ubiquitous  by  his  com- 
mand of  the  sea,  which  the  English  had  now  resigned, 
pouncing  where  he  Avas  least  expected,  sweeping  the 


12  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

country  before  the  national  levies  could  be  got  together, 
and  at  last  keeping  permanent  hold  upon  large  districts, 
the  Dane  had  brought  the  English  kingdom  to  the  verge 
of  destruction,  when  a  heroic  deliverer  arose  in  the  person 
871     of  Alfred,  the  model  man  of  the  English  race.     Round 
the  head  of  Alfred  a  halo  has  gathered  ;  his  history   is 
panegyric  ;  yet  there  can  be  no  doubt  of  his  greatness  as 
a  saviour  of  his  nation  in  war,  as  a  reorganizer  of  its 
institutions,    of    which   pious    fable   has    made   him   the 
founder,  as   a   restorer   of  its  learning  and  civilization. 
Parts  might  be  combined  in  those  early  times  which  could 
not  be  combined  now.     With  Alfred  the  monarchy  rises 
in  power  and  majesty  ;  to  plot  against  the  king's  life  is 
now   made   treason.     Alfred  was   followed   by  a  line  of 
901     able  kings :    Edward  the  Elder ;    Athelstan,  who  smote 
925     the  Dane  with  his  Scotch  and  Irish  allies  at  the  battle 
937     of  Brunanburg  ;    Edmund,  who  followed  up  Athelstan's 
940     victory  over  the  Dane  ;    Edgar  the  Pacific,  who,  tradi- 
958     tion  said,  was  rowed  by  six  kings  in  his  barge  upon  the 
Dee.     In  Edgar  the  English  kingdom  rose  to  its  highest 
pitch  of  greatness,  its  power  extending  over  Wales  and 
Scotland.     The  Dane,  though  vanquished,  was   not   ex- 
pelled.    He    divided   the   land.      His   portion    was   the 
northeast,  thenceforward  called  the  Danelagh,  where  he 
has  left  his  memorials  in  local  names  and  in  the  character 
of  a  bold,  sea-faring  race.  . 

It  is  at  this  point  in  the  history  that  a  political  figure, 
afterwards  prominent,  appears  upon  the  scene.  Dun- 
stan,,  styled  Saint,  was  a  reformer  of  the  church  in 
the  monastic  sense.  But  the  struggle  between  the  mo- 
nastic party  and  its  opponents  appears  to  have  become 
political.  Dunstan  is  credited  with  the  good  government 


i  OLD  ENGLISH   POLITY  13 

of  Edgar.  That  he  struggled  for  power  and  gained  it  is 
a  fact  better  known  than  his  policy.  The  cell  of  the 
anchorite  is  not  a  good  school  of  statesmanship.  It  sends 
forth  its  denizen  pure,  perhaps,  and  disinterested,  but 
hard,  uncompromising,  and  relentless.  So  far,  however, 
as  can  be  seen  through  the  dense  mist  Dunstan's  power 
was  used  in  a  monkish  way  for  good. 

After  Edgar  the  royal  line  decays,  as  royal  lines  in  a 
low  stage  of  civilization  are  apt  to  decay,  corrupted  by 
coarse  luxury,  unless  their  energies  are  kept  up  by  war. 
The  Dane  renews  his  attacks  and  there  is  no  Alfred, 
Athelstan,  or  Edmund  to  confront  him.  The  feeble  979 
Ethelred,  instead  of  iron,  tries  gold,  with  the  usual 
result ;  tries  massacre,  with  the  result  which  it  deserves. 
His  successor,  Edmund  Ironside,  is  a  hero,  and  during  1016 
a  few  months  of  incessant  battle  holds  up  the  head  of 
the  nation.  On  his  death  the  kingdom  passes  by  treaty  IOIG 
to  the  Dane,  who  adds  the  English  crown  to  those  of 
Denmark  and  Norway,  now  formed  by  the  growing 
power  of  the  kings  into  regular  states.  But  the  Dane 
has  become  a  Christian  and  not  less  civilized  than  the 
Englishman.  Canute,  though  he  waded  to  his  throne  1017 
through  blood,  when  seated  on  it  showed  himself  a  Chris- 
tian ruler,  a  ruler  even  ostentatiously  Christian.  The 
legend  which  makes  him  rebuke  the  flattery  of  his 
courtiers  and  refuse  afterwards  to  wear  his  crown  was 
not  ill-invented.  He  displayed  his  piety  by  making  a 
pilgrimage  to  Rome,  where  he  obtained  privileges  for  his 
people,  and  on  his  return  he  published  an  address  to  the 
nation  instinct  with  Christian  principles  of  government. 
He  yielded  to  provincial  spirit  and  the  difficulty  of  ruling 
personally  his  disjointed  empire  so  far  as  to  divide  the 


14  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

realm  into  four  great  earldoms,  a  measure  the  conse- 
quences of  which  were  disastrous  to  unity,  and  in  the 
end  to  the  life  of  the  nation.  Otherwise  he  seems  not 
to  have  changed  the  polity.  But  he  kept  a  standing 
army  of  house-carls  or  guards,  on  the  footing  of  com- 
panionship-in-anns,  and  he  evidently  wielded  despotic 
power.  His  two  sons  were  weak;  the  second  of  them 

1042  was  a  toper,  who  died  as  he  stood  at  his  drink.      The 
English  kingdom  could  not  be  permanently  united  with 
the  Danish  and  Scandinavian  kingdoms.      The  Danish 
dynasty  came  to  an  end. 

1043  The   native  line   of   Cerdic  was  now  restored  in  the 
person  of  Edward  the  Confessor.     He  was  a  bad  speci- 
men of  ecclesiastical  Christianity,  a  monk  upon  a  throne 
which   called   for   a   strong   man.      His   delight   was   in 
church-building  and  ceremonial.      He  begot  no  heir  to 
his  crown.     Brought  up  as  an   exile   in   Normandy,  he 
had  a   fatal    fondness   for    Normans,   who    were    better 
courtiers,  subtler  intriguers,  and,  if  not  more  pious,  more 
ecclesiastical  than  his  English.     The  politics  of  his  reign 
were  a  wavering  struggle  between  the  foreigners  whom 
his  weakness  had  allowed  to  thrust  themselves  into  high 
preferment,  and  the   native  party  headed  by  the   great 
Earl  Godwin  and  his  heroic  son   Harold.     At   first  the 
foreigners  prevailed,  by  the  help  of  the  northern  earls,  who 
were  jealous  of  Godwin  and  his  son,  the  earls  of  the  south. 

1051  Godwin  and  his  son  were  driven  into  exile,  but  they  came 
back,  they  were  welcomed  by  the  people,  and  the  for- 

1052  eigners  in  their  turn  were  expelled.     The  Norman  Rob- 
ert of  Jumieges  fled  from  the  archbishopric  of  Canterbury 

1052   and  his  pall,  which  were  taken  by  the  English  Stigand, 
an  act  of  presumption  not  unmarked  by  Rome. 


I  OLD   ENGLISH  POLITY  15 

Edward  the  Confessor  having  left  no  son,  the  witan 
exercised  its  right  of  election.    Passing  over  Edgar  Athel- 
ing,  of  Cerdic's  line,  a  boy  and  in  exile,  it  raised  Harold 
the  son  of  Godwin  to  a  throne  of  which  he  had  shown   1066 
himself  worthy  both  in  politics  and  in  war. 

There  seeins  to  have  been  weakness  in  the  state  of 
England.  Danish  ravages  and  conquest  could  hardly 
fail  to  make  havoc  of  the  institutions  as  well  as  of  the 
land.  Many  of  the  leaders  of  the  people  must  have 
fallen  in  battle.  The  north  was  but  imperfectly  welded 
to  the  south.  Provincial  feeling  was  strong,  patriotism 
was  not.  The  great  earldoms  had  overtopped  the 
crown  and  divided  the  nation.  The  house  of  Leofric 
dominated  in  the  north,  while  that  of  Godwin  dominated 
in  the  south,  and  the  two  were  drawing  the  kingdom 
apart.  Political  history  through  the  reign  of  Edward 
the  Confessor  was  a  tissue  of  personal  ambitions  and 
intrigues.  Perhaps  as  a  consequence  of  the  general  inse- 
curity and  lawlessness  produced  by  the  Danish  wars,  the 
practice  of  commendation,  which  is  one  part  of  feudalism, 
had  prevailed,  and  the  people  had  been  throwing  them- 
selves for  protection  at  the  feet  of  lords,  becoming,  in- 
stead of  freeholders  and  freemen,  vassals  and  prsedial 
serfs.  So  it  appears  from  a  survey  of  the  realm  taken  in 
the  next  reign.  The  slave  trade,  of  which  Bristol  was 
the  seat,  and  which  was  fed  by  kidnapping,  is  also  a 
sign  of  social  disorder. 

The  weakness  tempted  a  mighty  robber. 


CHAPTER   II 

THE    CONQUEST    AND   WILLIAM    I 
WILLIAM  I.  BORN  1027  ;  CROWNED  AT  WESTMINSTER  1006  ;  DIED  1087 

TN  France  the  Northman,  turning,  as  he  did  in  Eng- 
land, from  pirate  to  conqueror  and  settler,  had  carved 
out  from  the  kingdom  of  France  a  duchy,  nominally 
granted  by  the  king  at  Paris,  and  owing  him  a  formal 
allegiance  after  the  fashion  of  feudalism,  which  made 
the  vassal's  obedience  due  not  to  the  king,  but  to  his 
immediate  lord,  and  bade  him  follow  the  lord  to  the 
field  against  the  king.  The  Normans  had  adopted  the 
French  language  and  henceforth  rank  as  Frenchmen. 
The  last  duke,  Robert  the  Devil,  to  atone  for  the  life 
by  which  he  had  earned  his  nickname,  had  deserted  his 
duties  as  ruler  and  gone  upon  a  crusade.  He  left  as 
his  successor  an  infant  son,  a  bastard  ;  but  the  bar  sin- 
ister, though  disparaging,  was  not  fatal  in  wild  times. 
The  boy,  as  he  grew  up,  proved  a  great  soldier  and  poli- 
tician. No  man  could  bend  his  bow,  and  the  force  of 
his  frame  bespoke  that  of  his  will.  His  strong  hands 
strangled  the  serpents  of  feudal  anarchy  almost  in  his 
cradle.  His  life  had  been  a  struggle  with  rebellious 
vassals,  hostile  neighbours,  and  his  suzerain  of  Paris, 
from  which  at  once  by  generalship  and  statecraft  he  had 
come  out  victorious,  enlarging  his  hereditary  dominions 
at  the  expense  of  his  neighbours.  He  had  now  set  his 

16 


CHAP,  ii  THE   CONQUEST  AND   WILLIAM  I.  17 

heart  upon  a  greater  prize.  He  had  visited  England  in 
the  lifetime  of  Edward  the  Confessor  and  had  seen  the 
kingdom  without  an  heir,  the  oligarchy  of  earls  divided, 
national  spirit  at  a  low  ebb,  Normans  already  in  places 
of  power.  Upon  the  death  of  Edward,  he  laid  claim  to 
the  crown  of  England.  His  claim  was  baseless.  It  was 
founded  partly  on  an  alleged  but  unattested  promise  of 
Edward,  who  in  his  last  moments  had  named  not  Will- 
iam but  Harold  as  his  successor,  and  who,  though  his 
word  might  have  weight  with  the  witan,  had  no  power 
of  devising  the  crown  ;  partly  on  an  alleged  engagement 
of  Harold  himself,  who,  having  been  shipwrecked  on  the 
French  coast,  had  fallen  into  the  hands  of  William,  and 
by  him,  it  seems,  had  been  forced  to  swear  that  he  would 
deliver  England  into  the  Norman's  hands.  To  make 
the  oath  more  binding,  relics  had  been  concealed  beneath 
the  table  on  which  it  was  sworn,  and  the  saints  had  been 
made  parties  to  the  fraud.  Such  was  the  sanctimony  of 
the  Norman.  That  the  English  king  Ethelred  had 
married  a  Norman  princess  could  add  nothing  to  the 
force  of  the  claim.  The  election  of  Harold  by  the  witan 
was  decisive.  But  when  the  news  was  brought  to  Will- 
iam he  broke  forth  into  a  paroxysm  of  wrath,  denounced 
Harold  as  a  perjured  usurper,  left  the  chase,  hurried  to 
his  hall,  assembled  his  vassals,  and  by  his  address  pre- 
vailed upon  them,  unwilling  as  they  were,  to  follow  him 
in  the  invasion  of  England.  He  sent  out  invitations 
also  to  the  roving  soldiers  of  other  countries,  promising 
them  lands  and  spoil.  It  is  vain  to  split  hairs  on  the 
question  whether  he  was  or  was  not  a  conqueror. 

The  enterprise  had  a  double  character  ;  it  was  a  cru- 
sade as  well  as  a  conquest.     With  the  ambition  of  Will- 

VOL.     I 2 


18  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

iam  conspired  an  ambition  not  less  grasping,  not  less 
ruthless,  not  less  sanctimonious  than  his.  Hildebrand, 
afterwards  Gregory  VII.,  though  not  yet  pope,  swayed 
the  papal  councils.  He  had  formed  a  design,  not  only 
of  setting  the  church  free  from  secular  influence,  but  of 
putting  the  profane  powers  of  the  world  under  the  feet 
of  the  papacy,  which  to  him  presented  itself  as  the 
one  power  of  right  divine.  He  sought,  among  other 
things,  to  enforce  the  celibacy  of  the  clergy,  as  the  seal 
of  their  spiritual  purity,  and  to  the  end  that,  severed  from 
all  domestic  and  earthly  ties,  they  might  everywhere  be 
the  soldiery  of  the  church.  The  church  of  England, 
in  communion  with  Rome,  and,  venerating  Rome  as  its 
mother,  still  retained  its  national  character  and  a  meas- 
ure of  national  independence.  Much  in  it  was  irregular 
to  a  high  churchman's  eye.  No  sharp  line  was  drawn 
between  church  and  state.  The  witan  dealt  with  eccle- 
siastical affairs.  There  was  no  demarcation  of  the  eccle- 
siastical from  the  temporal  courts  and  law.  The  celibacy 
of  the  clergy  was  little  enforced  among  a  domestic  and 
somewhat  sensual  people.  Altogether  the  church  fell 
below  the  Hildebrandic  mark.  There  were  besides  spe- 
cial causes  of  complaint  ;  the  papal  tribute,  called  Peter's 
pence,  was  irregularly  paid ;  Archbishop  Stigand  had 
uncanonically  intruded  himself  into  the  see  of  the  fugi- 
tive Robert  of  Jumieges  ;  had  taken  the  mystic  pallium 
with  his  own  hands  instead  of  suing  for  it  at  the  hands 
of  the  pope,  and,  by  afterwards  receiving  it  at  the  hands 
of  an  anti-pope,  had  aggravated  the  offence.  The  Nor- 
man was  a  favourite  of  the  papacy.  Though  a  marauder 
he  was  ecclesiastical  and  everywhere  pious  and  papal 
in  his  rapine.  To  bring  Germany  into  subjection  to  the 


ii  THE  CONQUEST  AND   WILLIAM  I  19 

Vicar  of  Christ,  Hildebrand  filled  her  with  civil  war. 
To  bring  England  into  the  same  subjugation  he  laid  his 
curse  upon  her  rightful  king,  blessed  the  unrighteous  in- 
vader, and  sent  a  consecrated  banner  and  ring  as  pledges 
that  the  favour  of  God  would  be  with  the  army  of  in- 
iquity. The  power  which  thus  sought  its  ends  is  styled 
moral,  in  contrast  to  the  powers  of  force.  Superstition  is 
no  more  moral  than  force,  and  to  effect  its  object  it  has 
to  suborn  force,  as  it  did  in  hallowing  the  Norman  inva- 
sion of  England. 

All  know  the  story.  How  William  gathered  an  arma-  1066 
ment,  the  greatest  that  had  been  seen  in  Europe  since 
the  fall  of  the  Empire  ;  how  Harold  stood  ready  to  de- 
fend his  land  ;  how  fortune  helped  the  invader  ;  how 
the  English  fleet  which  guarded  the  channel  was  forced 
to  put  into  port ;  how  at  the  supreme  moment  Harold 
was  drawn  away  to  the  north  to  cope  with  another  in- 
vader, the  famous  corsair,  Harold  Hardrada,  instigated 
by  Tostig,  Harold's  disloyal  and  exiled  brother ;  how 
Harold  triumphed  gloriously  over  the  Dane  at  Stamford 
Bridge  ;  how  again  rushing  southwards  he  found  the 
Norman  disembarked  in  Sussex  ;  how,  besought  by  his 
brave  brothers,  as  he  was  under  the  papal  curse,  to 
stand  aside  and  let  them  light  for  him,  he  replied  in  the 
spirit  of  Hector,  who  said  that  the  best  of  omens  was  to 
be  fighting  for  one's  country  ;  how  he  took  post  on  the 
woody  hill  of  Senlac  covering  the  road  to  London,  his 
house-carls  or  guards  in  the  centre,  the  raw  country 
levies  on  his  flanks  ;  how,  with  the  consecrated  banner 
of  the  pope  borne  before  him,  the  Norman  stormed  the 
hill  ;  how,  after  a  long  day's  fight,  the  Norman's  disci- 
pline prevailed  over  undisciplined  valour,  the  Norman's 


20  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

mailed  cavalry  and  bowmen  prevailed  over  the  English 
axe,  and  the  last  English  king,  his  eye  pierced  by  an 
arrow,  lay  dead  with  his  brothers  and  his  bravest  round 
him  on  the  fatal  height.  Harold  slain,  national  resist- 
ance collapsed  for  lack  of  a  leader  ;  the  young  Edgar 
Atheling,  grandson  of  Edmund  Ironside,  elected  king 
in  the  hour  of  despair,  proved  a  mere  puppet  and  was 
never  crowned ;  the  great  northern  earls,  Edwin  and 
Morcar,  were  found  weak,  selfish,  false  to  the  national 
cause.  William  sagely  presented  himself,  not  as  a  con- 
queror, but  as  lawful  king,  promising  to  respect  right 
and  do  justice  ;  all  bowed  before  his  power  and  his 
policy  ;  he  was  crowned  with  due  elective  forms  at  West- 
minster, a  Saxon  prelate  taking  part ;  though  in  the 
midst  of  the  ceremony,  to  mark  its  real  character,  his 
fierce  soldiery  fired  the  city,  and  the  rite  ended  in  con- 
fusion and  terror.  His  coronation  made  him  lawful  king 
and  stamped  resistance  to  him  as  treason,  entailing  for- 
feiture of  land. 

There   ensued,  as  the   invader's   oppression,  or  rather 
that  of  his  lieutenants  was  felt,  local  risings  against  him 

1068  in  Kent,  at  Exeter,  at  Durham,  at  York,  and  through 
the  north.  The  rising  in  the  north  was  the  most  for- 
midable, as  it  was  aided  by  the  Dane,  coming  to  reclaim 
the  monarchy  of  Canute.  To  put  it  down  forever  the 
Conqueror  laid  the  whole  district  waste,  so  that  the  peo- 
ple died  by  thousands  of  famine,  and  the  country  was 
thrown  back  for  many  a  day.  The  most  heroic  stand 
was  made  in  the  Isle  of  Ely,  a  fortress  of  nature  among 
the  marshes,  by  Hereward,  a  popular  hero,  who  gathered 

1071  there  a  patriot  band  and  held  out  long  enough  to  bring 
the  Conqueror  himself  into  the  field.  Danish  aid,  once 


ii  THE   CONQUEST  AND   WILLIAM   I  21 

more  hovering  on  the  coast,  William  bought  off.  The 
closing  scene  of  the  struggle  is  indicated  by  the  Con- 
queror's law  of  presentment  of  Englishry,  requiring  the 
neighbourhood  in  which  a  man  was  found  murdered  to 
prove  that  the  man  was  not  a  Norman,  but  an  English- 
man. A  few,  who  preferred  exile  to  submission,  carried 
their  English  battle-axes  to  Constantinople  and  enlisted 
in  the  Imperial  guard. 

Forfeiture  and  confiscation  followed  the  suppression 
of  rebellion  from  district  to  district  over  the  realm,  till 
at  last  the  bulk  of  the  land,  including  nearly  all  the 
great  estates,  had  passed  out  of  English  '  into  Norman 
hands.  There  was  left  a  body  of  small  English  free- 
holders, into  which  those  who  had  before  been  great 
landowners  sank  down.  Of  the  mass  of  the  people  the 
lot  was  preedial  servitude,  under  several  names  and  forms; 
of  some  of  them  actual  bondage.  Prsedial  servitude  had 
probably  been  the  lot  of  most  of  them  before  ;  but  now 
they  were  under  foreign  masters,  and  the  best  authority 
holds  that  the  succeeding  age  was  probably  one  of  in- 
creasing misery  to  the  serf.  The  English  language 
shared  the  degradation  of  the  people,  Norman-French 
taking  its  place  as  that  of  the  ruling  class. 

Philosophic  historians  call  the  Norman  conquest  a  bless- 
ing in  disguise.  Disguised  the  blessing  certainly  was  to 
those  whose  blood  dyed  the  hill  of  Senlac,  or  whose  lands 
were  taken  from  them  and  given  to  a  stranger.  Dis- 
guised it  was  to  the  perishing  thousands  of  the  ravaged 
north.  Disguised  it  was  to  the  whole  of  the  people,  en- 
slaved to  foreign  masters,  and  for  the  time  down-trodden 
and  despised.  But  was  it  in  any  sense  a  blessing  ?  Why 
was  England  in  need  of  the  Norman  ?  Could  not  Harold, 


22  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

her  own  elected  and  heroic  king,  have  ruled  her  as  well 
as  the  stranger  ?  Could  he  not  have  united  her,  if  it  was 
union  that  she  lacked,  as  well  as  William,  and  without 
laying  waste  the  north  ?  On  the  other  hand  there  was 
formed  the  connection  with  France  which  led  to  the  Hun- 
dred Years'  War.  The  Norman  conquest  severed  from 
England  the  Saxon  lowlands  of  Scotland,  and  thus 
put  off  the  union  of  Britain.  In  what  was  the  Norman 
so  superior?  England  had  a  polity,  however  rude  or 
dilapidated.  Normandy  had  no  polity  ;  it  had  only  a 
feudal  anarchy  held  down  by  an  arbitrary  duke.  The 
attempt  of  some  of  its  people  to  create  a  commune  had 
been  suppressed  in  blood.  Private  war  was  there  the 
rule.  England  had  laws,  while  Normandy  had  none. 
England  had  writers,  such  as  Bede,  Csedmon,  Alcuin,  and 
such  a  patron  of  letters  as  Alfred.  Normandy  had  no 
literature  of  her  own.  In  church  art  the  Norman  was 
more  advanced,  though  his  art  was  imported,  and  the 
Norman  masonry  in  England  is  pronounced  bad.  Eng- 
land had  arts  of  its  own,  such  as  embroidery  and  illumi- 
nation ;  church  art  might  have  come  in  time.  In  time 
and  with  peace  might  have  come  magnificence,  of  which 
the  Norman  had  certainly  a  larger  share.  In  castle-build- 
ing the  Norman  was  pre-eminent.  To  England  that  curse 
had  been  unknown.  The  Saxon,  no  doubt,  was  heavy 
and  home-loving.  The  Norman,  nearer  to  the  pirate 
stock,  was  active,  venturous,  and  intriguing.  Here  again 
time  was  wanted.  The  independent  self-development  of 
a  nation  purely  Teutonic,  not  in  blood  only,  but  in  char- 
acter and  institutions,  was  lost  to  humanity.  A  pure 
Teutonic  language  was  wrecked,  and  replaced  by  a  med- 
ley, rich  perhaps  for  eloquence  or  poetry,  but  ill-suited 


ii  THE   CONQUEST  AND    WILLIAM   I  23 

for  exact  thought  or  science,  so  that  it  is  compelled  to 
borrow  its  scientific  and  philosophic  nomenclature  from 
the  Greek.  Civilization  generally  must  have  been  thrown 
back  by  the  havoc.  These  are  questions  for  the  historical 
optimist,  although  so  completely  did  the  Norman  element 
at  last  blend  with  the  English,  that  to  doubt  the  benefi- 
cence of  the  Norman  conquest  seems  like  a  disparagement 
of  ourselves.  The  Norman  is  credited  with  a  genius  for 
political  organization  so  superior  as  to  compensate  the  evils 
of  the  conquest,  with  how  much  justice  will  presently  be 
seen. 

In  rough  times  wager  of  battle  may  in  some  measure 
be  a  true  test ;  might  may  be  a  real  sign  of  right.  But 
the  victory  of  the  Norman,  hardly  won,  would  not  have 
been  decisive  had  not  the  arrow  pierced  Harold's  brain. 
Not  by  lack  of  worth  was  England  lost,  though  it  may 
have  been  lost  partly  by  lack  of  national  unity  and  mili- 
tary discipline.  What  was  fatal  was  the  lack  of  a  leader 
in  the  hour  of  need. 

Did  feudalism  come  into  England  with  the  Norman 
conquest?  That  part  of  feudalism  which  consisted  in 
commendation  or  attachment  to  a  lord  had  been  there 
before.  Under  the  feudal  system  proper,  as  it  was  in 
France,  the  allegiance  of  the  vassal  was  due  to  his  local 
lord,  and  the  great  fiefs  were  principalities  into  which  the 
kingdom  was  divided,  leaving  but  a  nominal  supremacy 
to  the  king.  Of  this  system  the  Norman  William  had 
experience,  and  against  its  introduction  into  his  English 
kingdom  he  guarded  by  compelling  all  who  held  their 
lands  by  military  service  to  do  homage  and  vow  alle- 
giance directly  to  himself.  Against  the  growth  of  prin- 
cipalities too  strong  for  his  control  he  guarded,  or  the 


24  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

accidents  of  confiscation  guarded  him,  by  scattering  the 
manors  of  the  great  lords  all  over  the  kingdom  so  that 
nowhere  could  any  one  lord  command  a  great  military 
force.  He  made  exceptions  only  in  border  districts,  such 
as  Durham  and  Chester,  where  he  sanctioned  the  exist- 
ence of  counties  palatine  or  principalities  as  necessary 
bulwarks  a.gainst  the  Scotch  or  Welsh.  He  gave  no 
earldom  to  his  sons. 

To  the  constitutional  antiquary  must  be  left  the  ques- 
tion as  to  the  origin  of  the  feudal  system.  Grants  of 
land  to  be  held  by  military  service  seem  the  natural 
resort  of  a  conquering  power  which  wishes  to  hold  and 
defend  its  conquests,  be  it  Roman,  Frank,  Norman,  or 
Turkish.  Delegation  of  government  to  local  chiefs  seems 
the  natural  resort  of  every  power  without  a  central  ad- 
ministration. Submission  to  a  protector,  or  commenda- 
tion, seems  the  natural  resort  of  the  weak  in  lawless 
times.  Out  of  these  elements  the  feudal  system,  in  its 
various  phases,  may  have  sprung  spontaneously  and  with- 
out imitation. 

When  complete  the  system  was  a  polity  of  landowners 
holding  their  land  with  the  jurisdiction,  power,  and  rank 
attached,  by  military  tenure,  the  grantee  of  the  fief  pay- 
ing homage  and  owing  fealty  to  the  grantor  throughout 
the  scale,  while  the  grantor  owed  the  grantee,  as  his  vas- 
sal, protection  ;  the  king,  as  arch-landowner  and  supreme 
lord,  being  the  apex  of  the  feudal  edifice.  The  system 
was  such  that  two  feudatories  might  be  each  other's  lords 
and  vassals  in  respect  of  different  fiefs,  and  a  king  holding 
a  fief  in  another  kingdom  might  be  the  vassal  of  its  king. 

The  Norman  monarchy  was  an  autocracy  with  an  advi- 
sory council  of  feudal  magnates,  and  practically  limited 


ii  THE   CONQUEST  AND   WILLIAM  I  25 

by  the  force  of  the  military  baronage  which,  however, 
could  ill  afford  to  weaken  the  hands  of  its  chief  while 
English  hatred  of  the  Norman  conqueror  still  throbbed. 
Legal  limits  to  the  king's  power  there  were  none ;  but 
he  had  no  standing  army  to  enforce  his  will  unless  he 
hired  mercenaries.  His  army  was  the  levy  of  his  mili- 
tary tenants,  bound  with  their  under-tenants  to  serve  him 
for  forty  days.  When  the  system  was  complete  a  quota 
of  knights,  that  is,  mailed  horsemen,  was  furnished  in 
proportion  to  the  extent  of  the  land.  The  king  could 
also,  when  the  Normans  were  restive,  call  out  the  fyrd, 
or  national  levy  of  the  English  people,  though  the  mailed 
cavalry  of  the  Normans  was  still  the  dominant  force. 
He  was  at  once  captain,  ruler,  lawgiver,  if  mere  edicts 
could  be  called  law,  and  supreme  judge,  the  distinction 
between  those  functions  not  having  been  yet  made. 
Royal  justice  moved  about  with  him  over  the  kingdom. 
By  him  order  was  maintained,  and  his  peace  was  the  curb 
upon  private  war.  Without  his  license  no  castle  could 
be  built.  Of  him,  since  the  conquest,  all  land  was  sup- 
posed to  be  held.  He  was  supreme  ruler  and  landlord 
paramount  in  one.  He  was  the  head  of  the  feudal  hie- 
rarchy, receiving  the  homage  of  his  tenants-in-chief,  as 
they  received  the  homage  of  their  under-tenants.  His 
revenues  were  the  produce  of  his  fourteen  hundred 
manors,  his  feudal  aids,  dues,  and  fines,  his  justice-fees, 
and  his  fees  and  fines  of  other  descriptions  ;  the  whole 
collected  for  him  in  each  county  by  the  sheriff,  acting  as 
farmer-general.  He  had  a  resource  at  need  in  Danegelt, 
an  old  impost  imposed  in  the  times  of  the  Danish  wars. 
He  could  tallage  or  tax  at  will  the  people  of  his  own 
domain,  his  towns  included.  He  had  the  right  of  pur- 


26  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

veyance,  or  taking  provisions  and  wains,  practically  at 
his  own  price,  for  himself  and  for  his  train.  He  had 
thus  ordinarily  no  need  to  come  to  the  nation  for  sup- 
plies, and  was  free  from  that  limit  to  his  power.  He  was 
the  fountain  of  honour.  He  appointed  to  all  the  offices 
of  state,  and,  under  the  forms  of  ecclesiastical  election,  to 
the  great  offices  of  the  church.  His  title  was  still,  not 
King  of  England,  but  King  of  the  English,  dominion 
being  not  yet  regarded  as  territorial.  He  had  no  capital, 
but  moved  from  one  royal  villa  to  another,  consuming  the 
produce  of  his  manors  on  the  spot.  The  monarchy  was 
hereditary,  yet  with  the  form  and  even  right  of  elec- 
tion still  subsisting,  though  with  limitation  to  the  blood 
royal.  Primogeniture  prevailed ;  but  the  rule  of  suc- 
cession was  still  unsettled ;  necessity  would  have  the 
man  rather  than  the  woman  or  the  boy ;  nor  was  the  will 
of  the  last  sovereign  without  its  influence.  The  church, 
in  crowning  the  king  with  religious  forms,  hallowed  mon- 
archy, and  at  the  same  time  pledged  it  to  duty.  Of  the 
divinity  which  afterwards  hedged  a  king  there  was  as  yet 
but  little,  yet  his  majesty  was  revered,  and  loyalty  to  his 
person  was  felt.  The  offices  of  his  household,  those  of 
the  steward,  the  chamberlain,  the  master  of  the  horse, 
which  a  Roman  under  the  Empire  would  have  spurned 
as  servile,  the  Norman  noble  held  with  pride.  The  chief 
officer  of  the  monarchy  was  the  Justiciar,  whose  name 
shows  that  he  represented  the  king  as  the  dispenser  of 
justice,  and  who  in  the  king's  absence  was  regent  of  the 
kingdom. 

Thrice  in  the  year,  at  Christmas,  Easter,  and  Whitsun- 
tide, at  Westminster,  Winchester,  and  Gloucester,  the  king 
kept  high  state,  wore  his  crown,  gathered  round  him  the 


ii  THE   CONQUEST  AND   WILLIAM   I  27 

barons,  his  tenants-in-chief,  who  formed  the  Great  Council 
of  his  realm,  took  their  advice  on  the  affairs  of  his  gov- 
ernment, and  with  them  dispensed  high  justice,  of  which 
the  House  of  Lords  is  still  nominally  the  supreme  tri- 
bunal. Legislation,  in  our  sense  of  the  term,  as  yet  was 
not.  The  sole  law  was  the  custom  of  the  realm.  Beyond 
this  there  were  only  ordinances  or  decrees.  The  degree 
in  which  the  advice  of  the  assembly  prevailed  would  de- 
pend upon  the  personal  character  of  the  king. 

Besides  the  common  council  of  the  realm  meeting  thrice 
in  the  year,  the  king  must  always  have  had  a  standing 
council,  consisting  of  his  ministers  of  state,  the  great 
officers  of  his  household,  and  other  objects  of  his  personal 
confidence,  for  administration  and  justice.  This  was  the 
Curia  Regis.  It  was  the  germ  out  of  which  both  the  sev- 
eral courts  of  law  and  the  departments  of  government 
were  in  course  of  time  to  be  developed. 

No  mean  part  of  the  king's  prerogative  was  his  lordship 
of  the  royal  forests,  where  he  was  really  as  well  as  legally 
absolute  and  his  will  made  the  cruel  forest  law.  In  the 
intervals  of  war  the  chase  was  the  vent  for  the  Norman's 
energies  and  his  relief  from  the  dull  solitude  of  the  castle. 
The  modern  squire  seeks  relief  from  the  dulness  of  his 
country  house  in  the  pursuit  of  game,  and  the  modern 
game  law  is  the  relic  of  that  which  guarded  the  Norman's 
chace.  William  laid  waste  a  vast  tract  in  Hampshire, 
destroying  hamlet  and  church,  to  make  him  a  hunting- 
ground.  The  struggle  against  the  extension  of  royal 
forests  and  of  forest  law  will  be  no  small  part  of  the 
battle  of  constitutional  freedom. 

It  was  in  his  character  as  supreme  landlord  that  Will-   1085 
iam  caused  to  be  made  a  survey  and  terrier  of  his  king- 


28  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

dom,  the  famous  Doomsday  Book,  in  which  are  minutely 
set  down  the  holdings,  dues,  and  condition  of  all  the 
people.  Doomsday  Book  reveals  the  general  disposses- 
sion of  the  English  proprietary  and  intrusion  of  the 
Norman,  under  forms,  however,  of  legal  succession  or 
acquisition  beneath  which  confiscation  is  veiled.  By  the 
people  the  survey  was  regarded  with  horror  as  the 
precursor  of  a  more  searching  taxation.  William  loved 
money  as  the  engine  of  power,  and  drew  a  revenue, 
which  though  overstated  by  fabling  chroniclers,  was  no 
doubt  very  large  for  those  days.  But  the  survey  was 
also  important  as  a  step  towards  centralized  government. 

Between  Norman  and  Englishman  110  legal  line  was 
drawn,  no  Englishman's  land  was  confiscated  on  the 
ground  of  his  race,  nor  to  the  Norman  was  any  special 
privilege  accorded  except  that  of  his  trial  by  battle, 
while  the  Englishman  kept  his  trial  by  ordeal.  The  ex- 
istence of  different  race  customs  under  the  same  govern- 
ment was  in  those  times  not  unfamiliar.  Saxon  and  Dane 
had  their  different  tribal  customs  under  Alfred.  Law  in 
primitive  times  was  personal  or  tribal,  not  territorial. 
There  was  no  legal  impediment  to  intermarriage.  A 
niece  of  the  Conqueror  was  married  to  the  Saxon 
Waltheof.  Saxon  landowners  who  retained  their  land 
apparently  retained  their  general  position.  William 
steadily  adhered  to  the  fiction  that  he  was  the  lawful 
successor  of  Edward  the  Confessor,  and  that  the  English 
as  well  as  the  Normans  were  his  people.  He  had  won 
England  not  for  the  Normans  but  for  himself. 

The  aristocracy  was  territorial  and  military ;  military 
as  created  by  conquest,  as  holding  its  estates  by  military 
tenure,  and  as  forming  a  class  dedicated  to  arms.  Fiefs, 


ii  THE   CONQUEST  AND   WILLIAM   I  29 

in  their  original  conception  beneficiary  and  granted  for 
life,  had  become  property  subject  to  a  relief  on  each 
demise  together  with  other  feudal  rights  and  dues  re- 
served for  the  grantor,  as  well  as  to  the  duty  of  service 
in  war.  They  could  not  be  alienated,  but  went  entire  to 
the  eldest  son  or  other  heir,  so  that  they  were  practically 
entailed,  and  formed,  like  the  entailed  estates  of  the 
present  peerage,  an  enduring  basis  for  the  order.  Each 
baron  was  a  sovereign  in  his  own  manors,  compelled  the 
attendance  of  the  serfs  at  his  court,  and  governed  them 
by  his  edicts,  justice  and  police  going  with  lordship, 
where  the  royal  power  in  the  king's  person  or  that  of 
his  deputy  did  not  intervene.  Chivalry  and  knighthood 
witli  their  class  code  of  generosity  and  courtesy  were 
confined  to  the  military  aristocracy.  Afterwards,  further 
to  mark  the  distinction,  armorial  bearings  come  in.  At 
first  the  sentiment  of  birth  can  hardly  have  been  pre- 
dominant, since  adventurers  had  borne  a  part  in  the 
conquest.  Private  war,  the  evil  privilege  of  feudal 
nobility,  in  which  the  Norman  nobles  rioted,  was  in  Eng- 
land repressed  by  the  king  when  his  hand  was  strong. 
This  was  perhaps  his  greatest  boon. 

All  tenants-in-chief  were  barons,  a  name  of  which  the 
origin  is  uncertain  ;  but  the  meaning  probably  is  "  man  " 
of  the  king ;  a  free  man,  perhaps,  in  contrast  to  the 
serf.  Above  the  barons  were  the  earls,  territorial  dig- 
nitaries with  local  command  and  revenues  from  their 
earldoms.  Of  these  the  Conqueror's  policy  created  few, 
at  least  when  rebellion  had  broken  out  among  the 
Normans. 

It  has  been  said  that  the  conquest  was  no  breach  of 
political  continuity.  The  Conqueror  did  not  mean  to 


30  THE   UNITED   KINGUO^I  CHAP. 

uproot  the  institutions  of  his  new  kingdom,  least  of  all 
those  which  were  favourable  to  royal  power.  That  he 
should  introduce  Norman  institutions  and  laws  was  impos- 
sible, since  Normandy  had  neither  institutions  nor  laws. 
The  Norman  council  may  be  called  a  continuation  of 
the  witan,  though  its  legal  powers,  if  it  could  be  said 
to  have  any,  were  less  than  those  of  the  witan  had 
been. 

The  local  organizations,  shire,  hundred,  tithing,  and 
burgh,  with  their  assemblies,  remained.  The  shire,  or 
county,  was  still  an  effective  district  of  administration 
and  justice,  though  the  name  of  the  shire  was  changed  to 
county,  and  that  of  the  shire-reeve  to  viscount.  It  was 
destined  to  grow  in  importance,  to  be  the  unit  of  local 
organization,  the  local  sphere  of  public  activity,  and  at 
last  the  basis  of  electoral  government.  A  great  suit 
between  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  and  another  prel- 
ate was  decided  in  the  Conqueror's  reign  by  the  county 
court  on  Pennenden  Heath.  Submerged,  in  part,  for  the 
present  by  the  flood  of  conquest,  the  English  system  of 
local  self-government  was  destined,  when  the  flood  sub- 
sided, to  reappear.  The  continuation  of  these  local 
organs  of  political  life  was  the  most  valuable  part  of  the 
heritage  bequeathed  by  Alfred's  England  to  that  of  later 
times.  The  national  fyrd,  or  militia,  was  left  in  existence 
beside  the  feudal  force,  and  to  it  when  feudalism  mu- 
tinied the  kings  were  led  to  appeal.  The  shire  with  its 
sheriff  or  viscount  appointed  by  the  crown  still  formed 
the  rudiment  of  a  centralized  government.  But  land 
held  of  the  crown  by  a  military  tenure  was  the  central 
idea  of  the  Norman  polity  ;  whereas  the  English  polity 
had  been  national,  however  decayed.  In  a  return  from 


ii  THE  .CONQUEST  AND   WILLIAM  I  31 

the  basis  of  military  tenure  to  a  national  basis  constitu- 
tional progress  will  in  a  great  measure  consist. 

At  this  time  the  Norman  manor  must  have  been  every- 
where the  predominant  mould  of  local  life.  The  manors 
of  a  great  lord  being  scattered  over  the  kingdom  were 
commonly  managed  and  ruled  for  him  by  his  steward, 
Avho  exacted  of  the  villain  tenant  his  quota  of  forced 
labour  on  the  lord's  domain  with  such  petty  tributes  in 
kind  as  were  required  by  the  rule  of  his  holding.  In 
return  for  this  the  peasant  had  his  hut  and  his  lot,  with 
the  privilege  of  pasture  on  the  common  of  the  manor, 
a  relic  of  the  tribal  ownership  of  land  in  primitive  times 
which  has  lasted  down  to  our  own  day.  The  parish 
was  commonly  identical  with  the  manor,  and  the  parson 
shared  authority  with  the  steward. 

The  revolution  extended  to  the  church.  The  English 
primate  Stigand  and  almost  all  the  English  bishops  and 
abbots  were,  on  various  pretences,  Rome  conspiring, 
ejected,  and  Normans  were  installed  in  their  room. 
Papal  legates  appeared  in  "England,  were  received  by 
William  as  gods,  and  inaugurated  drastic  reforms  in  the 
high  church  sense,  which  was  the  sense  of  William  as 
well  as  of  Rome.  To  a  great  extent,  Hildebrand's  will 
was  done.  A  sharp  line  was  now  drawn  between  church 
and  state ;  the  church  was  henceforth  to  deal  with  mat- 
ters ecclesiastical  in  her  own  assemblies  apart  from  the 
council  of  the  nation.  She  was  to  have  her  separate 
jurisdiction  over  spiritual  persons  and  in  spiritual  causes. 
The  bishop  was  no  longer  to  sit  with  the  sheriff  in  the 
shire  court.  That  division  was  made  between  the  tem- 
poral and  the  spiritual  power,  each  with  its  own  sword, 
from  which  were  presently  to  flow  antagonism  and  bitter 


32  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

conflict.  The  arrears  of  Peter's  pence  were  paid ;  celi- 
bacy was  enjoined  on  the  priesthood ;  everything  was 
reformed  on  the  high  church  model,  so  far  as  the  rough 
English  character  would  permit.  Hildebrand  demanded 
more.  He  called  on  William  to  do  homage  for  his  kingdom 
in  token  that  he  held  it  as  a  fief  of  the  Holy  See,  again 
showing  how  far  was  the  papacy  from  being  purely  a 
spiritual  power.  But  the  time  for  this  had  not  yet  come, 
nor  was  William  the  man.  The  kings  before  him,  Will- 
iam said,  had  done  no  homage,  nor  would  he.  Instead  of 
doing  homage,  he  laid  down  rules  which  became  prin- 
ciples of  the  English  monarchy ;  that  no  pope  should  be 
accepted  in  England  till  he  had  been  recognized  by  the 
king ;  that  no  papal  missive  or  legate  should  be  received 
without  the  king's  permission  ;  that  nothing  should  be 
enacted  at  any  synod  without  his  consent ;  that  without 
his  knowledge  no  tenant-in-chief  should  be  excommuni- 
cated and  thereby  debarred  from  the  service  of  his  lord. 
Norman  kings  appointed  the  bishops  under  the  form  of 
election  by  compliant  chapters,  much  as  the  crown  now 
appoints  under  the  form  of  a  congS  d^lire.  Only  the 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  being  obliged  to  receive  the 
mystical  pall  or  tippet  from  Rome,  owed  his  appointment 
so  far  to  the  pope,  and  represented  before  the  crown  the 
papal  power.  William,  when  a  lord  bishop  guilty  of 
a  breach  of  feudal  fealty  pleaded  his  ecclesiastical  im- 
munity from  secular  law,  shoAved  that  he  understood  the 
distinction  between  the  spiritual  and  the  temporal  by 
arresting  the  feudatory  with  his  own  hand.  There 
remained,  however,  the  ineffaceable  fact  that  papal 
authority  had  been  admitted  when  its  sanction  had  been 
sought  for  the  conquest,  while  by  severance  of  the 


ii  THE   CONQUEST  AND   WILLIAM  I  33 

church,  with  its  tribunals  and  assemblies,  from  the  state, 
the  king  ceased  to  be,  what  the  kings  before  the  conquest 
had  been,  head  of  the  church  as  well  as  of  the  state. 
As  a  necessary  consequence  came  a  separate  church  law 
with  the  appellate  jurisdiction  of  the  papacy  in  its  train. 

Not  as  ecclesiastics  but  as  magnates  and  landowners 
the  archbishops,  bishops,  and  mitred  abbots,  lords  spir- 
itual as  they  were  afterwards  called,  sat  with  the  lay 
barons  in  the  great  council  of  the  realm,  of  which  by 
their  number  and  intellectual  superiority  they  formed  a 
most  important  part,  thus  giving  power  to  the  ecclesias- 
tical interest,  but  at  the  same  time  identifying  it  with 
the  state. 

In  the  character  and  learning  of  their  high  ecclesiastics, 
imported  if  not  native,  the  Normans  were  superior  to  the 
English.  The  king  did  well  for  the  English  church  and 
for  himself  at  the  same  time  by  choosing  as  his  minister 
in  ecclesiastical  affairs  and  his  general  adviser  Lanfranc, 
prior  of  Bee.  Though  prior  of  a  Norman  abbey,  Lan- 
franc was  not  a  Norman,  but  an  Italian,  a  scion  of  the 
church  at  large,  and  thus  fitted  to  act  as  a  mediator 
between  races,  with  a  mind  liberalized  by  learning. 
He  looked  down  upon  the  English,  but  did  not  hate 
them,  identified  himself  with  his  new  field  of  action, 
upheld  the  rights  of  the  English  church,  made  the  best 
order  that  he  knew,  revived  sy nodical  life,  promoted 
church-building  and  art.  He  enhanced  the  grandeur  and 
influence  of  bishoprics  by  transferring  them  from  villages 
to  cities.  He  was  a  good  specimen  of  the  men  whom  the 
church  could  give  to  the  state.  Papal  he  was,  of  course, 
but  he  must  have  concurred  with  William  in  limiting 
papal  claims.  Whatever  Lanfranc  might  do,  however, 


34  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

the  spiritual  shepherds  of  the  English  after  the  conquest, 
foreigners  in  race  and  language,  would,  in  the  eyes  of 
the  people,  be  foreign  wolves.  A  Norman  abbot,  having 
quarrelled  with  his  English  monks,  brings  archers  into 
the  church  to  shoot  them  down. 

England  was  a  member,  now  more  thoroughly  than 
ever  a  member,  of  the  religious  confederation  of  Latin 
Christendom,  the  language  of  which  henceforth  was 
that  of  her  church  and  generally  that  of  her  men  of 
letters,  ousting  the  vernacular  English  for  many  a  day 
from  literature  and  the  service  of  religion.  With  the 
rest  of  that  confederation,  she  was  falling  under  the 
autocracy  of  the  pope.  The  see  of  the  Imperial  city, 
surviving  the  Roman  Empire,  became,  amidst  the  chaos 
of  barbarian  invasion  that  ensued,  the  natural  centre  or 
rallying-point  of  the  Latin  church ;  legend,  which  as- 
scribed  its  foundation  to  the  prince  of  the  apostles, 
helping  to  establish  its  primacy.  Its  primacy,  even  its 
supremacy,  might  be  useful  when  the  pope  was  Gregory 
the  Great,  who  declined  as  impious  a  title  importing 
universal  sway.  But  with  Hildebrand  opened  an  era 
of  papal  ambition,  aiming  at  lordship  not  only  over  the 
whole  church,  but  virtually  over  the  state,  on  the  ground 
that  the  spiritual  was  above  the  temporal,  as  though 
that  warranted  a  claim  on  the  part  of  the  spiritual  to 
the  kingdom  of  this  world.  Papal  dominion  was  sup- 
ported in  each  country  by  the  clerical  order,  whose  privi- 
leges, however  unreasonable,  it  upheld,  and  was  extended 
by  appeals  to  superstition,  as  well  as  by  playing  on  the 
fears  and  rivalries  of  monarchs,  while  the  papal  councils, 
unlike  those  of  other  governments,  never  changed  and 
were  guided  with  an  address  above  that  of  the  rude  kings 


ii  THE   CONQUEST  AND   WILLIAM  I  35 

and  nobles  of  the  time.  The  papacy  was  fast  becoming 
an  empire,  triple-crowned,  of  ecclesiastical  ambition,  en- 
croaching on  the  domain  and  warring  against  the  rights 
of  national  governments  ;  and,  though  it  sometimes  lent 
a  sinister  support  to  patriotism,  its  political  influence  will 
be  found,  as  we  proceed,  to  have  been  as  a  rule  upon 
the  other  side.  Usurpation,  indeed,  could  hardly  be  a 
blessing,  especially  when  it  had  to  be  sustained  by  in- 
trigue, forgery,  and  lies.  The  Hildebrandic  papacy  was 
in  its  very  essence  intolerant  and  persecuting ;  the  enemy, 
therefore,  of  truth,  of  science,  of  progress,  and  of  the 
highest  civilization.  It  had  in  it  from  the  beginning 
the  extermination  of  the  Albigenses,  the  persecution  in 
the  Netherlands,  the  massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew,  the 
Inquisition,  the  imprisonment  of  Galileo,  the  murder  of 
Giordano  Bruno.  Its  latest  utterance,  the  Encyclical,  1864 
still  avows  its  tendencies  and  designs.  It  could  never 
pretend  even  to  universality,  for,  calling  itself  universal, 
it  has  always  been  Italian. 

The  church  had  wandered  far  from  the  hillsides  of 
Galilee,  on  which  peasant  crowds  listened  to  the  simple 
words  of  life  and  love.  It  had  become  dogmatic,  sacra- 
mental, ceremonial,  thaumaturgic,  sacerdotal,  hierarchical, 
papal.  It  had  framed  for  itself  a  body  of  casuistry  and 
a  penitential  tariff  of  sin.  It  had  set  up  the  confessional 
and  the  influence  which  to  the  confessional  belongs.  It 
had  invented  purgatory  and  masses  for  the  dead.  It  had 
imbibed  into  its  own  veins  not  a  little  of  the  polytheism 
which  it  slew,  worshipping  the  Virgin  and  the  Saints, 
adoring  relics,  practising  pilgrimage.  It  had  borrowed 
from  the  East  asceticism  and  set  up  the  ascetic  ideal. 
It  had  adopted  clerical  celibacy,  severing  the  clergy  from 


36  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

the  commonwealth  and  the  home.  It  had  become  intol- 
erant and  persecuting.  Instead  of  subsisting  by  the 
freewill  offerings  of  the  faithful,  as  in  its  early  days,  it 
subsisted  by  compulsory  tithes,  using  the  arm  of  force  to 
collect  them.  By  receiving  grants  from  feudal  princes, 
it  had  been  incorporated  into  the  feudal  system,  and  its 
chief  pastors  had  become  feudal  lords,  sometimes  feudal 
soldiers,  often  ministers  and  courtiers  of  the  powers  of 
the  feudal  world.  To  strike  the  balance  of  its  spiritual 
merits  against  its  spiritual  demerits  with  due  allowance 
for  the  needs  of  a  coarse  and  violent  age  would  be 
extremely  difficult,  and  is  not  our  present  object.  It  is 
with  political  action  only  that  we  have  here  to  do. 
Politically  the  church  did  service,  though  by  no  means 
unequivocal,  in  curbing,  by  the  assertion  of  its  privileges, 
the  despotic  power  of  monarchs.  It  did  service,  though 
in  a  way  injurious  to  its  own  spiritual  essence,  by  fur- 
nishing to  the  rude  councils  of  military  kings  and  barons 
statesmen  comparatively  educated,  comparatively  large- 
minded,  and  comparatively  studious  of  peace.  It  did 
a  service  still  more  gracious  by  opening,  in  an  age  of 
feudal  aristocracy,  the  paths  of  preferment  to  the  poor 
and  low-born,  whom  it  raised  through  its  orders  to  high 
places,  both  ecclesiastical  and  secular ;  though  in  this 
good  work  it  had  a  partner  in  municipal  privilege, 
which  sheltered  the  fugitive  serf  and  admitted  him  to 
the  fellowship  of  industry  and  trade.  Against  these 
political  merits  are  to  be  set  disorders  arising  from 
clerical  privilege,  which  will  presently  be  seen.  The 
church  fostered  such  literature  as  there  was  and  gener- 
ally the  arts  of  peace,  including  that  ecclesiastical  archi- 
tecture which  by  its  grandeur  and  poetry  impresses  and 


ii  THE   CONQUEST  AND   WILLIAM   I  37 

enthrals  us  still.  On  the  other  hand,  by  her  dogmatic 
intolerance  she  crippled  thought  and  fatally  barred  the 
advance  of  science.  She  gave  us  the  Chronicles  and 
the  School  Philosophy ;  she  extinguished  the  lamp  of 
Roger  Bacon.  A  supreme  tribunal  of  morality,  social 
and  intellectual,  with  a  chancery  of  public  law,  was 
indeed  a  magnificent  idea.  But  for  its  fulfilment  it 
required  such  presidents  as  hardly  any  of  the  popes 
were,  such  detachment  from  temporal  interests  and  am- 
bition as  never  was  shown  by  Rome.  What  the  pure 
spirit  of  Christianity,  working  through,  apart  from,  or 
against  the  ecclesiastical  organization,  may  have  done 
for  the  moral  and  social  character,  is  a  different 
question. 

The  wail  of  the  English  nation  made  itself  heard  at 
Rome.  It  touched,  we  are  told,  the  hearts  of  some 
cardinals.  But  it  smote  in  vain  on  the  stony  heart  of 
Hildebrand.  Guitmond,  a  Norman  monk,  who  had 
crossed  the  sea  at  William's  bidding,  refused  to  stay 
in  the  conquered  land  and  share  its  benefices,  saying 
that  God  hates  robbery  for  burnt-offering,  and  asking 
with  what  face  he,  one  of  an  order  whose  profession 
it  was  to  forsake  the  world,  could  share  spoils  won 
by  war  and  bloodshed.  He  trembled,  he  said,  as  he 
looked  on  England  lying  before  him  one  vast  prey,  and 
shrank  from  the  touch  of  its  wealth  as  from  a  burning 
fire.  The  Norman  Gulbert  of  Hugleville  had  loyally 
followed  his  lord  across  the  sea  and  fought  well  under 
his  standard.  Having  seen  William  firmly  settled  on 
the  throne,  he  went  back  to  his  Norman  home,  prefer- 
ring his  modest  heritage  there  to  wealth  won  by  rapine. 
\Ve  can  thus  gauge  the  morality  of  the  papacy  as  re- 


38  THE   UNITED  KINGDOM      •  CHAP. 

presented  by  the  most  famous  of  popes,  and  determine 
its  worth  as  the  moral  regulator  of  Christendom. 

The  monarchy,  the  aristocracy,  the  church  in  its  polit- 
ical aspect,  will  for  some  time  be  the  three  pieces  on 
the  political  board.  By  their  interaction  arid  collision, 
at  first  almost  blind,  the  rudimentary  constitution  will 
be  formed. 

The  towns  are  still  very  weak.  They  are  little  better 
than  collections  of  wooden  and  thatched  huts.  Some  of 
them  had  been  shattered  by  the  conquest.  Over  them 
frowned  the  Norman  keeps;  over  London  frowned  the 
Norman  Tower.  London  is  a  considerable  place  of 
trade ;  it  shows  military  force ;  and  in  the  distraction 
which  followed  the  battle  of  Hastings  it  for  a  moment 
led  the  nation.  But  it  seems  to  have  had  no  regular 
government  of  its  own,  though  it  probably  had  the 
rudiment  of  a  municipality  in  the  form  of  a  guild.  It 
was  through  its  bishop  and  its  port-reeve  that  it  re- 
ceived from  the  Conqueror  the  grant  of  a  brief  charter, 
or  assurance  of  liberties.  Of  the  other  chief  cities, 
York,  the  old  Roman  capital  of  the  north,  Winchester, 
Gloucester,  and  Bristol,  not  one  can  have  exceeded  the 
present  measure  of  a  petty  town.  The  towns  generally 
were  mere  clusters  of  houses,  without  municipal  govern- 
ment, in  bondage  to  the  crown  or  the  lord  on  whose 
manor  they  were,  and  liable  to  be  tallaged  or  taxed  by 
him  not  less  than  the  rural  serfs. 

Pending  the  emancipation  of  the  cities  and  the  labourer, 
the  aristocracy  and  the  church,  struggling  for  their  own 
privileges,  play  in  some  measure  the  part  of  provisional 
champions  and  guardians  of  liberty. 

As   to  the  labourer,  centuries   must   elapse   before   he 


ii  THE    CONQUEST  AND   WILLIAM  I  39 

appears  at  all  on  the  political  field.  Villainage  or  serf- 
dom is  his  common  lot,  and  the  opprobrious  meaning 
associated  with  the  name  of  villain  shows  that  the  lot  was 
despised.  The  villain  was  bound  to  the  soil,  and  could 
be  sold  with  it ;  though  he  could  not  be  sold  apart  from 
it  like  a  slave.  The  chattel  slave,  it  has  been  conjectured, 
gained  by  elevation  to  villainage  while  the  peasant  or 
yeoman  was  degraded  to  it.  Political  rights  the  villain 
had  none.  In  shire-mote  or  hundred-mote  he  was  unre- 
presented. Personal  rights  he  had  against  all  men  except 
his  lord.  Such  was  his  social  status.  His  industrial 
emancipation  was  in  the  end  to  be  accomplished  by  legal 
decisions  which  recognized  his  customary  right  to  his  hold- 
ing by  the  tenure  of  fixed  services  and  dues.  Political 
emancipation  in  time  followed. 

William  was  a  strong  ruler,  and  a  strong  ruler  was  a 
good  ruler  in  those  times.  This  the  English  chronicler 
admits,  regarding  him  rather  with  awe  than  with  hatred. 
He  had  strict  notions  of  law,  though  he  could  wrest  it  to 
his  will,  and  the  forms  which  he  respected  were  to  become 
substance  at  a  later  day.  He  wished  even  to  be  merciful, 
and  thought  to  show  mercy  by  mutilating  instead  of  put- 
ting to  death. 

Scarcely  had  he  quelled  the  English  when  his  struggles 
with  Norman  turbulence  began.  At  a  fatal  marriage 
feast  a  rebellion  against  him  was  hatched  by  some  of  his 
chief  nobles  and  insurrection  broke  out.  He  quelled  the  1076 
insurrection  and  put  to  death  Waltheof,  the  last  English 
magnate,  who  had  at  first  been  drawn  into  the  conspiracy 
but  had  afterwards  revealed  it  in  confession,  an  incident 
which  suggests  that  the  Norman  confessional  may  have 
served  the  purpose  of  detective  police.  William  had  given 


40  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

Waltheof  his  niece  Judith  in  marriage,  a  proof  that  he 
wished  to  draw  to  him  the  English  nobility.  But  Judith, 
it  seems,  resented  the  marriage  as  one  of  disparagement, 
and  used  her  influence  against  her  husband.  Then  Will- 
iam's half  brother,  Odo,  Bishop  of  Bayeux,  who  had 
blessed  the  Norman  army  at  Hastings,  fired  by  conquest, 
conceived  a  wild  scheme  of  taking  a  body  of  William's 
liegemen  away  with  him  to  Rome  to  carry  the  papacy  by 
1078-  storm.  Finally  came  a  struggle  of  the  Conqueror  with  a 
cabal  of  his  restless  feudatories  in  Normandy,  headed  by 
his  own  son  Robert  and  backed  by  his  jealous  suzerain 
the  king  of  France.  Such  was  the  superior  genius^f  the 
Norman  for  political  organization. 

William's  end  showed  the  influence  of  religion.  He 
sent  for  a  holy  man  to  be  near  him.  In  his  last  moment 
he  commended  his  soul  to  Mary  the  Mother  of  God,  the 
sound  of  whose  church  bells  fell  on  his  dying  ear.  If  a 
chronicle  is  to  be  trusted,  his  conscience  called  up  in  long 
train  the  acts  of  his  stormy  life,  the  evil  deeds  which  he 
had  done,  and  the  blood  which  he  had  shed  in  the  path  of 
his  ambition.  We  see  here  the  action  of  a  moral  restraint 
unknown  to  Attila  or  Timur.  Of  this  the  church  in  virtue 
of  such  Christianity  as  it  embodied,  was  the  organ.  Yet 
it  had  not  availed  to  prevent  the  crime,  and  to  the  suf- 
ferers, at  all  events,  the  deathbed  repentance  was  little 
worth. 

When  William  expired,  general  panic  ensued,  and  men 
fled  to  their  possessions,  looking  for  a  reign  of  anarchy 
and  pillage.  The  corpse  of  the  Conqueror  lay  naked  and 
untended  till  a  knight  of  the  neighbourhood  took  it  into 
his  pious  care.  So  momentous  was  the  king's  peace,  which 
was  suspended  by  the  death  of  the  king.  The  oppressed 


ii  THE   CONQUEST  AND   WILLIAM   I  41 

people  of  England  had  half  forgiven  the  oppressor  for  the 
good  peace  which  he  had  made. 

At  length  the  Conqueror  reached  his  last  resting-place 
in  his  own  magnificent  church  at  Caen.  Round  the  bier 
stood  the  nobles  and  prelates  of  Normandy.  The  Bishop 
of  Evreux  pronounced  the  funeral  oration,  rehearsing  the 
great  deeds  of  the  departed,  and  asking  the  prayers  of  the 
assembly  for  the  illustrious  soul.  But  as  the  corpse  was 
about  to  be  lowered  into  the  grave,  Ascelin  Fitzarthur,  a 
private  citizen,  stood  forth  and  forbade  the  burial,  saying 
that  the  ground  was  his  and  that  he  had  been  wrongfully 
deprived  of  it.  He  was  promised  the  full  value  of  his 
land.  Underneath  institutions  or  changes  of  institutions 
and  the  conflicts  between  political  forces  lies  the  Teutonic 
spirit  which  makes  each  man  an  Ascelin  Fitzarthur  or  a 
Hampden  in  standing  up  for  his  right.  The  Norman 
conquest  of  England  was  at  all  events  a  conquest  by 
kinsmen,  though  kinsmen  who  had  changed  their  name 
and  tonsrue. 


CHAPTER   III 

THE  SUCCESSORS   OF   THE   CONQUEKOR 

WILLIAM  II 
BORW  1060;  SUCCEEDED  1087;  DIED  1100 

Conqueror  on  his  deathbed  left  Normandy,  as  the 
patrimonial  domain,  to  his  eldest  son,  Robert,  an  ad- 
venturous and  chivalrous  soldier,  but  unfit  for  rule.  Of 
England,  which  required  a  strong  ruler,  he  hesitated,  or 
affected  to  hesitate,  to  dispose,  as  it  had  been  won  by 
bloodshed.  But  at  last  he  nominated  his  second  and 
favourite  son,  William.  With  a  letter  to  Lanfranc, 
1087  William  sped  from  the  bedside  at  Rouen  while  his  father 
still  lived.  Lanfranc,  having  read  the  letter,  did  the 
Conqueror's  will  by  crowning  William  Rufus.  William 
thus  mounted  the  throne  by  nomination,  without,  so  far 
as  appears,  any  form  of  election,  though  Lanfranc  pledged 
him  to  good  government. 

With  the  reign  of  the  Conqueror's  successor  comes  a 
struggle,  first  between  the  crown  and  the  baronage,  then 
between  the  crown  and  the  church. 

In  character  as  in  person  the  red-faced  and  round- 
bellied  Rufus  was  a  coarse  and  debased  likeness  of  his 
father.  He  shared  the  Conqueror's  force.  He  had  some- 
thing of  the  Conqueror's  greatness  of  soul.  He  puts  to 
sea  in  a  storm  and  bids  the  seamen  fear  nothing,  for  no 

42 


CHAP,  in  WILLIAM   II  43 

king  was  ever  drowned.  He  takes  into  his  service  the 
gallant  soldier  who  had  unhorsed  him  in  combat.  The 
enemy  to  whom  his  word  has  been  plighted  he  lets  go, 
though  braved  and  threatened  by  him,  bidding  him  do 
his  worst.  He  curses  his  chamberlain  for  bringing  him  . 
boots  which  had  cost  too  little,  and  is  satisfied  when  a 
pair  is  brought  him  which,  though  not  better,  had  cost  a 
more  royal  price.  He  builds  an  immense  hall  at  West- 
minster and  says  that  it  is  a  bed-chamber  to  the  palace 
which  he  is  going  to  build.  He  magnanimously  refuses 
to  question  the  good  faith  of  a  knight.  He  had  been  a 
dutiful  son,  always  at  his  father's  side  ;  and  though  he 
was  rapacious,  and  was  not  pious,  he  spent  the  treasure 
bequeathed  to  him  freely  in  masses  for  his  father's  soul. 
It  has  been  said  with  apparent  justice  that  Rufus  was  a 
man  of  honour  with  a  caste  code,  who  behaved  like  a 
gentleman  and  kept  his  word  to  his  own  circle,  while 
he  trampled  on  the  rights  of  all  below. 

His  force,  the  king  had  soon  occasion  to  show.  The  1088 
Anglo-Norman  nobles  again  displayed  their  superior 
genius  for  political  organization  by  breaking  out  into  feu- 
dal anarchy.  They  did  not  want  to  be  cut  off  from  Nor- 
mandy, and  they  preferred  the  weak  Robert  to  the  strong 
William.  But  they  found  their  master.  Rufus  called 
for  aid,  not  only  on  the  tenants  of  the  crown,  but  on  the 
national  levy  of  the  English  generally  or  in  some  dis- 
tricts. His  call  was  heard,  and  Odo  of  Bayeux,  the 
soldier-prelate  of  the  conquest,  and  one  of  the  worst 
oppressors  of  the  conquered  people,  left  his  fortress, 
which  he  had  been  compelled  to  surrender,  amidst  the 
jeers  of  an  English  host.  The  subject  race  for  a  moment 
lifted  its  head  and  tasted  revenge.  Rufus  put  his  feuda- 


44  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

tories  down  and  held  them  down.  All  that  his  father 
1091  bequeathed  to  him  he  kept.  He  added  Cumberland, 
which  he  wrested  from  Scotland,  forcing  the  king  of 
Scots  to  pay  him  homage.  He  restored  and  fortified 
Carlisle  ;  he  carried  the  conquest  into  South  Wales. 
1095  Unhappily  he  afterwards  became  master  of  Normandy, 
which  fell  into  his  hands  through  the  thriftlessness  and 
recklessness  of  his  brother  Robert,  and  thus  renewed  a 
connection  destined  to  be  the  source  of  endless  woe.  A 
second  rising  of  the  great  barons  was  put  down  with  the 
same  vigour  as  the  first. 

William  of  St.  Carileph,  Bishop  of  Durham,  had  been 
implicated  in  the  rebellion.  When  he  was  called  to 
account  he  pleaded  ecclesiastical  privilege,  thus  raising 
the  question  between  church  and  state.  The  king  and 
the  great  council  overruled  his  plea.  He  was  ejected 
from  his  see  and  banished  from  the  realm. 

While  the  great  Lanfranc  lived,  his  pupil  seems  to  have 
kept  some  bounds.  When  Lanfranc  died,  the  evil  nature 
of  Rufus  broke  loose  ;  it  broke  loose  with  a  vengeance, 
as  an  evil  nature  is  apt  to  do  when  the  restraint  is  not 
conscience  but  an  external  authority  or  a  formal  system, 
such  as  that  of  the  medieval  religion.  The  king  became 
a  monster  of  tyranny  and  lust.  He  filled  his  coffers  with 
the  fruit  of  his  lawless  exactions,  and  his  dungeons  with 
the  victims  of  his  injustice.  He  did  not  marry ;  his 
bachelor  palace  was  a  den  of  sensuality ;  he  gathered 
there  a  circle  of  young  nobles  whose  habits  were  as  in- 
famous as  his  own,  and  among  whom,  when  the  lights 
were  extinguished  at  night,  unspeakable  scenes  of  de- 
bauchery ensued.  He  became  impious  as  well  as  tyran- 
nical and  immoral,  scoffed  at  religion,  set  Christian 


HI  WILLIAM   II  45 

priests  and  JeAvish  rabbis  to  tilt  against  each  other  in 
argument  before  him,  declaring  himself  open  to  convic- 
tion, and  for  a  fee  undertook  to  reconvert  to  Judaism  a 
Jew  who  had  been  converted  to  Christianity.  So  the 
chroniclers  tell  us.  The  vices  and  the  effeminate  fashions 
to  which  the  young  Normans  are  said  to  have  been 
addicted  are  a  strange  comment  on  the  alleged  superi- 
ority of  the  ruling  race.  Nor  do  the  unchecked  de- 
baucheries and  impieties  of  the  king  say  much  for  the 
moral  authority  of  the  Norman  episcopate  or  of  the  papal - 
ized  church.  What  sinner,  what  heretic  even,  was  to  be 
excommunicated,  if  Rufus  was  not  ? 

A  minister  of  his  extortion  Rufus  found  in  Ranulph 
Flambard,  or  the  Firebrand,  a  clever  and  knavish  priest, 
who  at  last,  as  Bishop  of  Durham,  partly  atoned  for  his 
roguery  by  his  share  in  building  the  mightiest  and  most 
impressive  of  the  old  English  cathedrals. 

Flambard,  as  justiciar,  is  credited  with  having  re- 
organized and  perfected  for  the  purpose  of  fiscal  exaction 
the  whole  system  of  feudal  claims  and  dues.  The  theory 
of  Flambard  and  the  feudalists  was  that  the  fief  was  still 
a  benefice  or  grant,  reverting  to  the  lord  as  grantor  on 
each  demise  of  the  tenancy,  and  for  the  renewal  of  which 
the  lord  was  entitled  to  levy  a  fine  or  relief.  To  prevent 
intermission  of  the  service  due  to  the  lord  through  the 
minority  of  the  heir,  the  lord  was  entitled  to  the  custody 
of  the  fief.  That  heiresses  might  not  marry  an  enemy  of 
the  lord,  he  was  entitled  to  dispose  of  their  hands  in 
marriage.  Regular  aids  were  to  be  due  for  the  ransom 
of  the  lord  from  captivity,  for  knighting  his  eldest  son, 
and  the  marriage  of  his  eldest  daughter.  Besides  all  this 
there  were  to  be  escheats  upon  failure  of  heirs,  forfeitures 


46  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

for  breach  of  fealty,  fines  for  failure  of  service.  The 
whole  formed  a  code  of  feudal  property  laws,  and  in  such 
hands  as  those  of  Flambard,  a  network  of  chicane. 
Rufus  and  Flambard  exacted  excessive  reliefs,  pillaged 
the  estates  of  minors,  sold  the  hands  of  heiresses,  and  im- 
posed exorbitant  fines.  The  royal  rights  of  forest  could 
not  fail  to  be  abused  for  the  purpose  of  fiscal  extortion,  as 
well  as  through  the  cruelty  of  the  forest  laws,  carried  to 
the  highest  pitch  by  a  monarch  whose  passion  was  the 
chase.  Rufus  seems  also  to  have  been  taught  by  his 
justiciar  to  make  himself  executor-general  to  his  subjects, 
and  in  that  capacity  to  have  seized  on  the  personal  effects 
of  the  deceased.  Another  instrument  of  extortion  was 
the  Jew,  who  had  prowled  as  usual  on  the  track  of  con- 
quest, and,  being  protected  by  the  king,  whose  chattel  he 
was  deemed  to  be,  in  the  practice  of  usury  which  was  for- 
bidden to  Christians,  acted  as  a  sponge  which  when  filled 
could  be  squeezed  by  the  arbitrary  hand  of  the  king. 
What  the  tenant-in-chief  owed  to  his  lord,  the  under- 
tenant owed  to  the  mesne  lord,  so  that  oppression  might 
work  downwards  through  the  whole  feudal  chain  from  the 
lord  paramount  to  the  tenant  paravail. 

There  does  not  seem  to  have  been  any  resistance  to  the 
tyranny  on  the  part  of  the  lay  feudatories  or  people. 
The  council  of  barons  apparently  exercised  little  power. 
Ranulph  Flambard  filled  the  treasury  and  enabled  the 
king  to  keep  bands  of  mercenaries,  of  which  unsettled 
Europe  supplied  plenty,  in  his  pay.  Such  resistance  as 
there  was  came  from  the  head  of  the  English  church,  and 
it  forms  a  memorable  episode  in  the  history  of  relations 
between  church  and  state. 

Among     other    devices    Flambard    asserted    that   the 


in  WILLIAM   II  47 

estates  of  bishoprics  and  abbeys,  as  fiefs,  not  only  were 
liable  to  the  same  services  as  other  fiefs,  which  in  reason 
they  were,  but  were  subject  to  lapse  during  vacancies  into 
the  hands  of  the  lord,  as  lay  fiefs  were  subject  to  ward- 
ship. Bishoprics  and,  still  more,  abbacies  were  kept 
vacant,  the  king  refusing  to  nominate,  while  the  profits 
of  the  estates,  raked  in  by  Flambard,  swelled  the  revenues 
of  the  crown.  The  simoniacal  sale  of  bishoprics  was  also 
an  item  in  Flambard's  budget. 

The  archbishopric  of  Canterbury  was  vacant  on  the  1089 
death  of  Lanfranc.  The  king  kept  it  vacant  for  four 
years  and  drew  the  revenues  of  the  see.  He  was  thus 
rid,  moreover,  of  the  archbishop's  authority ;  and,  as 
there  were  two  popes  in  the  field,  and  he  had  not  ac- 
knowledged either  Urban  or  Clement,  he  was  rid  of 
church  authority  and  restraint  altogether.  The  church 
of  England  was  without  a  head ;  her  corporate  life  was 
suspended ;  no  synod  could  be  held,  no  canons  could  be 
made,  nothing  could  be  done  to  reform  the  scandalous 
manners  of  the  court.  Popular  grievance  missed  its 
tribune  ;  there  was  no  one  who  could  appeal  with  author- 
ity for  the  suffering  people  to  the  conscience  of  the  king. 
They  besought  the  king  to  fill  the  see.  They  tried  to 
prevail  with  him  in  a  delicate  way  by  begging  his  leave 
to  have  prayers  said  that  his  heart  might  be  turned  and 
that  he  might  be  moved  to  give  the  church  a  chief  shep- 
herd. He  said  they  might  pray  as  much  as  they  pleased, 
but  he  swore  by  the  holy  face  of  Lucca,  his  favourite 
oath,  that  there  should  be  no  archbishop  in  England  but 
himself. 

Rufus,  however,  fell  sick,  and,  as  his  free-thinking  was    1093 
of  the  heart,  not  of  the  head,  it  gave  way,  and  he  had  a  fit 


48  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

of  repentance  in  which  the  prison  doors  were  opened  and 
promises  of  amendment,  restitution,  and  reformed  govern- 
ment were  made.  He  consented  also  to  fill  the  see  of 
Canterbury.  Anselm,  the  abbot  of  the  famous  Norman 
Abbey  of  Bee,  was  then  in  England,  and  had  been  con- 
sulted in  the  case  of  the  king's  soul.  The  general  wish 
of  good  churchmen  designated  him  for  the  see.  He  is 
one  of  the  most  beautiful  and  sweetest  characters  of  the 
middle  ages,  a  saint  indeed,  not  a  fakir  of  asceticism,  com- 
bining piety,  meekness,  humility,  simplicity,  freedom  from 
everything  carnal  or  worldly  with  active  benevolence  and 
virtue ;  so  at  least  his  loving  attendant  and  biographer, 
Eadmer,  has  painted  him.  Born  at  Aosta,  beneath  the 
spiritual  glories  of  the  Alps,  he  had  conceived  longings  for 
the  perfect  life,  that  is,  the  life  of  the  monk,  which  led 
him  to  leave  his  parents,  who  fondly  opposed  his  desire, 
and  his  home.  He  wandered  to  Normandy,  where  he 
entered  the  Abbey  of  Bee,  Lanfranc's  abbey,  and  became 
its  prior,  then  its  abbot.  His  name  was  now  in  all  the 
churches  as  theologian,  as  educator,  as  spiritual  director. 
As  a  theologian  he  was  the  precursor  of  the  school  divines, 
yet  evangelical,  and  the  author  of  a  metaphysical  proof  of 
the  existence  of  God  which  long  held  its  place  in  relig- 
ious philosophy ;  nor  have  his  works  been  consigned  to 
oblivion.  As  an  educator  dealing  with  the  school  which 
according  to  custom  was  attached  to  his  monastery,  he 
was  the  apostle  of  a  gentler  and  better  method  than  flog- 
ging, the  established  treatment  in  those  days,  and  when  a 
schoolmaster  complained  to  him  that  though  he  was 
always  flogging  his  boys  they  did  not  get  on,  he  answered 
that  the  reason  why  they  did  not  get  on  was  that  they 
were  always  being  flogged.  As  a  spiritual  director  he 


in  WILLIAM   II  49 

was  the  most  consummate  of  the  fishers  of  men.  The 
jealousies  and  cabals  of  which  monasteries  were  the  hot- 
bed, and  which  his  appointment  at  first  stirred,  soon  dis- 
appeared before  him.  The  malice  of  a  young  novice  who 
had  persecuted  him  was  by  his  gentle  skill  turned  into 
passionate  and,  if  a  monastery  could  admit  romance, 
romantic  friendship.  By  force  of  sympathy  he  could 
work  what  a  simple  age  took  for  miracles  in  conjuring 
away  the  hideous  phantoms  bred  by  the  morbid  fancies 
of  men,  some  of  whom  had  turned  monks  after  a  life  of 
wild  crime,  some  from  impulses  half  insane.  He  was 
active  also  in  the  infirmary.  His  benevolence  embraced 
even  suffering  animals,  the  hunted  hare  and  the  captive 
bird.  He  had  visited  England  in  the  last  reign,  had 
found  Lanfranc  turning  the  English  saints  out  of  the 
calendar  as  the  English  bishops  had  been  turned  out  of 
the  sees,  and  had  stayed  his  hand,  telling  him  that  Elpheg, 
whom  Lanfranc  was  about  to  discard  as  a  martyr  not  to 
religious  truth  but  to  patriotism,  in  being  a  martyr  to 
righteousness  was  a  martyr  to  the  truth.  In  the  saint's 
presence  the  Conqueror  had  put  off  his  pride.  On  his 
deathbed  he  had  sent  for  Anselm,  whom  sickness  pre- 
vented from  answering  the  call.  Anselm  had  now  come 
to  England,  partly  on  the  business  of  his  abbey,  which 
held  English  estates,  partly  to  assist  Hugh  Lupus,  or  the 
Wolf,  the  fat  earl  of  Chester,  a  licentious  soldier  of  the 
conquest,  in  the  reorganization  of  a  monastery  to  redeem 
the  earl's  soul.  Rufus,  before  his  sickness,  suspecting 
that  Anselm  had  an  eye  on  the  archbishopric,  had  made 
him  the  butt  of  his  jests ;  but  when  he  was  sick  he 
resolved  to  appease  heaven  by  a  holy  nomination.  We 
may  believe  Eadmer  when  he  says  that  Anselm  was 

VOL.    I 4 


60  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

unwilling  to  be  made  archbishop.  Even  the  temporal 
business  of  his  abbey  had  been  a  burden  to  him ;  how 
could  he,  saint,  philosopher,  arid  philanthropist,  wish  to 
be  lord  and  manager  of  a  great  fief  with  all  its  obligations, 
military  as  well  as  civil,  and  at  the  same  time  head  of  the 
English  church  and  chief  counsellor  of  a  king,  that  king 
being  William  Ruf  us  ?  To  put  him  at  the  side  of  such  a 
monarch  was,  as  he  foresaw,  to  yoke  an  old  and  feeble 
sheep  with  an  untamed  bull.  But  they  dragged  him  to 
the  king's  bedside,  they  forced  the  pastoral  staff  into  his 
clenched  hand,  they  raised  the  Te  Deum  over  him,  and 
bore  rather  than  led  him,  still  resisting  and  at  last 
fainting,  into  the  church.  Anselm  continued  to  struggle 
against  the  dangerous  promotion,  objecting  his  allegiance 
to  the  Duke  of  Normandy,  his  duty  to  his  abbey.  His 
objections  were  swept  away  and  he  was  consecrated  and 
1093  enthroned  as  archbishop.  Flambard,  according  to  Ead- 
mer,  obtruded  his  insolence  even  on  the  consecration  day, 
by  commencing  a  vexatious  suit  against  the  archbishop. 

Ruf  us  got  well,  and  his  last  state,  according  to  the 
chronicler,  was  worse  than  the  first.  All  the  oppression 
and  extortion  began  again,  and  the  prison  doors  closed 
upon  the  captives.  When  a  bishop  remonstrated,  the 
king's  answer  was,  "  By  the  holy  face  of  Lucca,  God 
shall  never  receive  good  at  my  hands  for  the  evil  I  have 
received  at  his."  Soon  he  began  to  quarrel  with  his 
saintly  archbishop.  First  he  tried  to  extort  blackmail 
for  the  induction  of  Anselm  into  his  see.  Anselm,  fearful 
of  the  reproach  of  simony,  nevertheless  for  the  sake  of 
peace  offered  five  hundred  pounds.  Ruf  us,  by  malignant 
advice,  rejected  the  gift,  and  the  archbishop  fell  from  the 
king's  grace. 


ni  WILLIAM   II  51 

Anselm  now  addressed  himself  to  the  moral  disorders 
of  the  young  courtiers,  their  effeminate  extravagance  in 
dress,  and  their  flowing  locks.  He  preached  on  Ash 
Wednesday,  we  are  told,  with  such  effect  that  many 
debauched  heads  were  submitted  to  the  barber.  But 
when,  seating  himself  by  the  side  of  the  king,  who  was 
bound  for  Normandy,  he  prayed  him  to  restore  religion 
and  let  a  synod  be  called  to  that  end,  the  king's  answer 
was  rough.  Still  rougher  was  it  when  Anselm  conjured 
him  to  let  the  abbacies  be  filled  that  monastic  order  might 
be  restored.  Anselm  sought  the  advice  of  the  bishops. 
The  bishops,  men  of  the  world,  who  had  probably  bought 
their  own  mitres,  could  only  suggest  the  offer  of  a  round 
sum.  It  was  thus  that  they  read  the  riddle  of  the  king's 
answer  to  Anselm's  prayer  for  restoration  to  royal  favour, 
"  that  he  would  not  do  it  because  he  knew  of  no  reason 
why  he  should."  Anselm  declined  to  shear  his  already 
close-shorn  tenantry.  The  king  refused  to  take  Anselm  1095 
back  to  his  grace,  broke  out  into  a  storm  of  hatred,  and 
departed  for  Normandy  without  the  primate's  blessing. 

Anselm  now  asked  the  king's  leave  to  go  to  Rome  and 
receive  the  pallium  from  Pope  Urban.  The  king  had 
returned  in  a  bad  humour  from  an  unsuccessful  expedi- 
tion. His  wrath  flamed  out.  Urban  had  not  been  recog- 
nized by  him,  and  the  primate,  he  held,  was  committing 
treason  against  the  custom  of  the  realm  which  forbade  the 
acceptance  of  any  pope  who  had  not  been  recognized  by 
the  king.  As  to  the  custom,  Rufus  was  right ;  but 
Anselm,  while  he  was  Abbot  of  Bee,  had  recognized 
Urban,  and  before  his  consecration  as  archbishop  he  had 
stipulated  that  this  recognition  should  hold  good.  It 
seems  he  had  put  up  with  an  ambiguous  answer;  if  he 


52  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

did,  his  bashfulness  cost  him  dear.  The  dispute  came  to  a 
head,  and  to  settle  it  and  condemn  Anselm,  if  he  was  guilty 
of  a  breach  of  allegiance,  the  grand  council  of  the  tenants- 
in-chief,  including  the  prelates  and  abbots,  was  called. 
1094  It  met  at  Rockingham  Castle,  on  the  verge  of  a  wild  for- 
est, where  Norman  power  was  most  terrible,  though  a 
churchman  would  generally  be  secured  against  violence 
by  his  order,  even  in  a  tyrant's  hold.  The  council  was 
held  in  the  castle  chapel.  In  a  chamber  apart  sat  the 
king  with  his  two  chief  councillors,  William  of  St.  Cari- 
leph,  Bishop  of  Durham,  who  had  now  changed  his  convic- 
tions as  to  the  relations  of  the  church  to  the  state,  and 
Robert,  Earl  of  Mellent,  the  Achitophel  of  his  age,  pros- 
perous under  every  star,  and  the  glass  of  fashion  as  well 
as  of  statecraft.  The  bishops,  under  the  influence  of  the 
crown,  perhaps  also  in  some  measure  from  political  con- 
viction and  desire  of  peace,  did  their  best  to  persuade 
Anselm  to  give  way.  Give  way  on  the  principle  he 
would  not,  though  he  was  anxious  to  do  anything  for 
peace  and  fervent  in  his  expressions  of  loyalty  to  the 
king.  As  the  bishops  would  not  stand  by  him  and  give 
him  faithful  counsel,  he  declared  that  he  would  betake 
himself  to  the  angel  of  counsel,  the  universal  shepherd, 
the  pope  ;  he  would  render  to  Caesar  the  things  which  were 
Caesar's,  to  God  the  things  which  were  God's ;  in  things 
which  were  Caesar's  obey  the  king,  in  things  which  were 
God's  obey  Peter.  As  Peter  was  not  God,  but  an  Italian 
priest,  this  was  an  avowal  of  divided  allegiance.  While 
his  enemies  were  in  consultation  Anselm  retired  into  a 
corner  and  fell  asleep,  a  sign  which  was  not  lost  upon 
Robert,  Earl  of  Mellent.  If  we  may  believe  Anselm's 
biographer,  he  received  a  proof  of  popular  sympathy  from 


in  WILLIAM   II  53 

a  knight  who,  stepping  forth  from  the  crowd,  knelt  before 
him  and  bade  him  be  of  good  cheer  and  emulate  the 
patience  of  Job.  After  two  days'  debate  the  king  called 
peremptorily  on  the  bishops  and  barons  to  pronounce  sen- 
tence of  deposition.  Here  he  found  the  moral  limits  of 
his  own  power.  The  bishops  dared  not  depose  their  pri- 
mate, the  barons  shrank  from  launching  against  the  eccle- 
siastical chief  of  their  own  order  a  bolt  which  might  recoil 
upon  themselves.  The  king's  wrath  was  vented  on  the 
bishops,  in  whose  shame  Anselm's  biographer  triumphs. 
The  end  was  an  adjournment  of  the  council  and  a  truce 
which  the  king  at  once  broke  by  a  persecution  of  Anselm's 
friends. 

The  king  and  his  party  now  changed  their  tactics. 
They  would  recognize  Urban  as  pope,  and  get  him  to 
rid  them  of  Anselm.  Here  they  were  playing  against 
Italians  more  than  a  match  for  them  in  subtlety.  Two 
clerks  of  the  king's  chapel,  William  of  Warelwast  and 
Girard,  went  on  a  path,  afterwards  well  trodden  by 
kings'  envoys,  to  Rome,  to  see  how  the  day  was  going 
between  the  pope  and  the  anti-pope.  They  returned, 
bringing  with  them  as  the  pope's  representative  Cardi- 
nal Walter,  Bishop  of  Albano,  the  first  papal  envoy  seen 
in  England  since  the  legates  who  had  done  Rome's  part 
in  the  conquest.  The  cardinal  dallied  till  Anselm's 
friends  took  fright  and  began  to  cry  out  against  the 
venality  of  Rome.  But  in  the  end  the  king  got  from 
him  nothing  but  courtly  and  unctuous  words.  Rome 
understood  her  game  too  well  to  sacrifice  Anselm.  Not 
even  a  large  bribe  which  Rufus  offered  could  tempt  her 
to  sell  the  keystone  of  her  arch  of  power.  There  was 
nothing  for  it  but  a  reconciliation,  which  took  place 


54  THE  UNITED  KINGDOM  CHAP. 

after  a  vain  attempt  on  the  part  of  the  bishops  to  cajole 
Anselin  into  buying  back  with  money  the  king's  favour. 
The  courtiers  tried  to  persuade  the  cardinal  at  least  to 
pay  the  king  the  compliment  of  letting  him  bestow  the 
pallium.  The  Italian  knew  better.  He  laid  the  pallium 
on  the  altar  at  Canterbury  and  let  Anselni  take  it  thence, 
as  it  were  from  the  hand  of  Peter.  Two  of  Anselm's 
enemies  among  the  bishops  avowed  their  penitence  and 
were  absolved.  There  ensued  a  hollow  peace  with  an 
outward  show  of  amity  which  gave  Cardinal  Walter 
occasion  for  saying  how  blessed  a  thing  it  was  to  see 
brothers  dwelling  together  in  unity. 

1096  The  peace  did  not  last  long.  Robert  of  Normandy 
going  on  crusade  to  raise  funds  for  his  outfit,  mortgaged 
his  duchy  to  Rufus.  To  raise  the  loan,  Rufus  laid  his 
hands  on  everything,  sacred  or  profane,  on  the  reli- 
quaries, the  holy  vessels,  the  golden  facings  of  the  mis- 
sals. Anselm  was  pressed  for  his  contribution.  With 
the  advice  of  two  bishops,  he  took  from  the  treasury 
at  Canterbury  two  hundred  pounds,  making  it  up  to 
the  church  by  a  mortgage  of  one  of  his  own  estates. 
Rufus,  however,  presently  renewed  his  persecution  of 
Anselm,  on  the  pretence  that  the  Canterbury  fief  had 
not  furnished  its  contingent  duly  armed  for  a  campaign 
in  Wales.  Meantime  there  was  no  hope  of  reform.  The 
spoliation  of  churches  and  monasteries  still  went  on. 
Vice  still  reigned,  and  the  king  was  still  the  chief  sin- 
ner. Anselm  resolved  to  go  and  cast  his  burden  on 
Peter.  Attending  the  court  at  Whitsuntide,  he  asked 
the  king  for  a  license  to  leave  the  realm,  and  was  met 
with  a  scoff  ;  "  he  had  committed  no  sin  needing  abso- 
lution, and  for  advice,  he  was  better  able  to  give  it  to 


in  WILLIAM   II  65 

the  pope  than  the  pope  was  to  give  it  to  him."  At  a 
meeting  of  the  great  council  which  followed,  the  re- 
quest was  renewed  and  was  again  refused,  with  a  threat 
of  seizure  of  the  primate's  estates  if  he  left  the  realm, 
which,  however,  as  it  touched  fiefs  generally,  seems  to 
have  bred  some  division  in  the  council.  There  was 
more  parleying  between  Anselm  and  the  bishops,  who 
told  Anselm  that  he  was  a  saint,  that  they  were  not 
saints,  but  men  with  earthly  ties,  that  they  could  not 
afford  to  break  with  the  king,  and  that  they  advised 
him  to  give  way.  Money,  they  always  hinted,  was  the 
sure  passport  to  the  king's  grace.  That  no  one  should 
go  to  Rome  without  the  king's  leave  was  undoubtedly  • 
the  law,  and  here  the  king  had  the  barons  on  his  side. 
Anselm  contended  that  if  he  had  promised  to  obey  the 
law  of  the  realm,  it  was  with  a  tacit  reservation  of  his. 
duty  to  God,  a  plea  which  even  untutored  soldiers 
might  perceive  to  be  subversive  of  good  faith.  As  he 
went  on  discoursing,  the  Count  de  M client  exclaimed 
that  he  was  preaching  a  sermon,  not  reasoning  to  men 
of  sense.  Anselm  had  clearly  again  proclaimed  the  doc- 
trine of  an  allegiance  divided  between  the  king  and 
Peter.  He  was  warned  that  his  estates  would  be  seized, 
and  that  he  would  be  allowed  to  take  nothing  with  him 
out  of  the  kingdom.  He  meekly  parried  the  threat,  and 
desired  that,  as  he  and  the  king  might  never  meet  again, 
the  king  would  at  parting  receive  his  blessing.  Rufus 
sullenly  bowed  his  head  to  receive  it. 

At  the  port,  Anselm  underwent  the  indignity  of  search.    1097 
The  estates  of  his  see  were  seized.     At  the  papal  court, 
he  was  received  with  the  highest  honour  as  the  pope  of 
another  world.     In  the  Council  of  Bari  he  shone  as  the    1098 


56  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

great  theologian  of  the  day,  vindicating  the  orthodox 
doctrine  of  the  Procession  of  the  Holy  Ghost  against 
the  heresy  of  the  Greek.  In  his  exile,  though  stripped 
of  his  estates  by  royal  wrath,  he  did  nothing  hostile  or 
disloyal  to  the  king.  On  the  contrary,  when  the  papal 
thunderbolt  was  about  to  be  launched  against  the  enemy 
of  the  church,  he  arrested  it  by  his  prayer.  Presently, 
however,  he  found  the  papal  support  failing  him  ;  the 
gold  of  Rufus  had  prevailed  against  him  at  Rome,  and 
he  went  into  pensive  retirement  at  Lyons.  Assuredly, 
if  ever  the  church  rendered  a  political  service  by  oppos- 
ing moral  to  physical  force  and  curbing  the  arbitrary 
will  of  kings,  she  did  it  in  the  person  of  Anselm. 

Rufus  went  on  in  his  old  courses.  Like  other  Nor- 
mans, he  was  a  mighty  hunter,  and  one  of  the  most 
grievous  parts  of  his  tyranny  was  his  savage  execution 
of  forest  law.  One  morning  at  the  ro}ral  seat  of  Win- 
chester, after  a  night  of  bad  dreams,  he  had  dark  pre- 
sentiments. But  in  the  afternoon,  having  dined  and 
drunk  deeply,  he  recovered  his  spirits  and  went  out  to 
hunt  in  the  New  Forest,  which  his  father  had  made  by 
levelling  church  and  hamlet  with  the  ground.  At  even- 
1100  ing  there  came  to  Winchester  a  party  of  peasants  bear- 
ing on  their  rough  cart  a  corpse  which  they  had  found 
in  the  forest.  It  was  that  of  Rufus,  with  an  arrow  in 
the  heart.  Who  shot  the  arrow  was  never  known. 
Walter  Tyrrell,  who  had  been  with  Rufus  in  the  forest, 
fled.  Monks  had  dreamed  prophetic  dreams ;  the  news 
was  spread  in  miraculous  ways;  there  had  been  a  plot 
before  for  slaying  Rufus  in  a  forest.  Probabilities  point 
to  tyrannicide,  a  fact  of  political  significance  in  its 
way.  The  Red  King  was  laid  without  religious  rites 


in  HENRY   I  57 

in  a  lowly  tomb.  None,  we  are  told,  wept  for  him  sav- 
ing hirelings  and  harlots ;  yet  Anselm,  who  is  said  to 
have  wept,  would  feel  that  he  had  lost  a  soul. 

HENRY  I 
BORN  1068;  SUCCEEDED  1100;  DIED  1135 

The  struggle  still  goes  on  between  the  crown  and  the 
baronage,  and  that  between  the  crown  and  the  church  is 
renewed.  The  crown  is  somewhat  weakened  by  breaks 
in  the  succession. 

Robert,  the  Conqueror's  eldest  son,  was  far  away  on  a 
crusade.  Henry  was  on  the  spot.  He  galloped  to  Win-  1100 
Chester,  seized  the  treasure,  thrusting  aside  its  keeper, 
De  Breteuil,  who  barred  his  way  in  the  name  of  Robert, 
the  legitimate  heir,  and  had  himself  elected  king.  The 
nature  of  his  title  and  the  elective  character  of  the  mon- 
archy he  clearly  admitted,  designating  himself  as  elected 
by  the  clergy  and  the  people,  that  is,  the  baronage,  the 
only  people  of  account.  He  had  the  advantage  over  his 
brother  of  being  born  in  England.  To  win  support,  he 
published  a  charter,  the  prototype  of  a  greater  charter 
to  come,  granting  redress  of  grievances.  The  church 
of  God  shall  be  free,  not  sold  or  put  to  farm  ;  nothing 
shall  be  taken  from  her  during  the  vacancy  of  bishopric 
or  abbey  ;  from  the  heir  of  the  tenant-in-chief,  no  more 
than  a  first  and  lawful  relief  shall  be  taken  ;  and  as  it 
is  done  by  the  king  to  his  ten  ants-in-chief,  so  shall  it 
be  done  by  the  tenants-in-chief  to  their  under-tenants ; 
if  a  feudatory  incurs  forfeiture,  he  shall  pay  only  a  fixed 
fine  ;  the  abuses  of  marriage  and  of  wardship  shall  cease  ; 
bequest  of  personal  property  shall  be  free,  and  the  per- 


58  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

sonalty  of  an  intestate  shall  go  to  his  family ;  debts 
owing  to  the  crown  are  forgiven,  suits  set  on  foot  by 
it  are  stayed ;  the  coin  shall  no  longer  be  debased  ;  the 
hundred  shall  no  longer  be  blackmailed  on  a  pretence 
of  its  responsibility  for  a  murder.  The  forests  Henry, 
having  the  family  passion  for  the  chase,  refuses  to  re- 
sign. An  immunity  from  fiscal  extortion  granted  to 
the  domain  lands  of  the  knights  reveals  the  existence 
of  a  class  of  landowners  below  the  baronage,  a  class 
of  country  gentlemen  destined  hereafter  to  be  of  the 
highest  political  importance.  Firm  peace  is  to  be  estab- 
lished throughout  the  realm.  To  the  English  people 
generally  is  promised  the  law  of  King  Edward,  which 
to  the  English  ear  meant  the  good  old  times.  Manners 
are  to  be  reformed,  and  the  palace  is  to  be  swept  clear 

1100  of  its  vices  and  lighted  at  night.  Anselm  is  recalled 
with  honour.  Flambard  is  thrown  into  prison,  though 

1100  the  rogue  manages  to  escape  by  letting  himself  down 
with  a  rope  conveyed  to  him  in  a  pitcher  of  wine.  The 
vacant  bishoprics  and  abbacies  are  rilled  with  learned 
clerks.  There  is  general  joy,  and  everybody  says  that 
the  Lion  of  Justice  foretold  by  Merlin  has  come. 

A  lion  had  indeed  come,  and  in  some  measure  he  was 
a  lion  of  justice.  The  Conqueror's  gifts  seem  to  have 
been  shared  among  his  sons.  Robert  had  his  spirit  of 
adventure,  William  his  prowess  as  a  soldier,  Henry  his 
statesmanship.  Henry  is  not  unqualified  for  the  com- 
mand in  war,  which  is  still  regarded  as  one,  perhaps  as 
the  first,  of  the  duties  of  a  king ;  but  he  prefers  the 
arms  of  the  cabinet.  The  times  are  growing  milder 
and  more  civilized  ;  there  is  a  faint  revival  of  literature 
and  elegant  Latinity ;  the  University  of  Oxford  is  born. 


in  HENRY  I  69 

War  itself  is  becoming,  among  the  knights  at  least, 
less  savage  and  more  of  a  tournament.  Henry  had 
shared  the  general  influence ;  he  was  surnamed  Beau- 
clerc ;  he  was  a  naturalist,  and  had  a  zoological  collec- 
tion at  Woodstock.  He  was  as  cold-blooded  as  his 
brother  had  been  hot-blooded,  and  as  calculating  as  his 
brother  had  been  impulsive.  From  his  eyes,  described 
by  the  chronicler  as  soft  and  mild,  a  light  not  soft  or 
mild  must  sometimes  have  gleamed.  A  wrong  he  sel- 
dom forgave,  an  insult  never.  The  troubadour  who  had 
satirized  him  was  blinded ;  a  faithful  servant  was  se- 
verely punished  for  a  light  word.  Conan,  the  rebel  of 
Rouen,  Henry  led  to  the  top  of  a  high  tower,  and,  after 
showing  him  in  mockery  the  fair  scene  below,  to  the 
command  of  which  the  rebel  had  aspired,  with  his  own 
arms  flung  him  down. 

Scarcely  had  the  new  king  seated  himself  on  the  throne 
when  Robert,  covered  with  glory  from  the  crusade, 
arrived  to  claim  his  birthright,  and  invaded  England  1101 
with  a  Norman  army,  Flambard  having  debauched  the 
fleet  which  watched  the  channel.  He  might  have  taken 
Winchester,  the  royal  city,  and  the  treasure-house ;  but 
the  queen  lay  there  in  child-bed,  and  the  crusader,  by 
refusing  to  attack  her,  showed  that  the  era  of  chivalry 
was  fully  come.  The  principles  of  election  and  legiti- 
macy as  titles  to  monarchy  now  confronted  each  other. 
In  face  of  a  Norman  army,  such  as  had  conquered  Eng- 
land, stood  an  army  partly  of  Normans,  partly  of  English. 
Henry,  we  are  told,  went  among  the  English  foot-soldiers 
teaching  them  how  to  meet  the  Norman  horse.  But 
prudence,  kinship,  the  interest  and  pride  of  race,  pre- 
vailed, and  a  treaty  was  made,  Henry  keeping  England, 


60  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

Robert  Normandy,  for  life,  with  cross  remainders,  and 
1101  Henry  paying  Robert  yearly  three  thousand  marks,  for 
which  sum  the  gallant  spendthrift,  who  was  said  to  have 
to  lie  abed  because  he  had  pawned  his  clothes,  was  will- 
ing to  sell  his  birthright.  This  introduced  another  sort 
of  title  to  the  kingship,  which  was  here  settled  like  a 
private  estate  subject  to  contract,  mortgage,  and  devise. 
Still,  within  the  limits  of  the  royal  line,  the  strong  man, 
or  the  man  of  the  hour,  was  king. 

In  the  moment  of  peril  Henry,  like  his  brother,  had 
appealed  to  the  English.  To  bind  them  to  him  he  mar- 
1100  ried  a  Saxon  princess,  Matilda,  daughter  of  Malcolm 
Canmore,  king  of  Scotland,  and  of  Margaret,  the  sister  of 
the  English  Prince  Edgar  Atheling.  Normans  might 
scoff  at  "  Goodman  Godric  and  Dame  Godiva,"  but 
Henry  kept  his  Godiva  till  she  had  borne  him  an  heir  ; 
then  he  allowed  her  to  become  a  nun.  That  this  was 
policy,  not  feeling  for  the  subject  race,  Henry  showed  by 
a  constant  preference  for  natives  of  Normandy,  especially 
in  appointments  to  bishoprics  and  abbacies. 

A  king  who  meant  to  govern,  as  King  Henry  did,  was 
sure  to  come  into  collision  with  the  baronage,  and  the 
hydra  of  feudal  anarchy  had  been  stirred  by  Robert's 
advent.  Henry  showed  his  force.  Robert  Malet,  Robert 
De  Pontefract,  Ivo  De  Grandmesnil,  were  brought  to 
trial ;  the  first  two  were  banished,  and  all  were  fined  or 
stripped  of  their  estates.  Most  formidable  and  worst  of 
all  was  Robert  De  Bellesme,  a  Norman  Ecceliiio,  who 
loved  cruelty  for  its  own  sake  ;  spared  his  enemies  in  war 
that  he  might  see  them  die  of  hunger ;  impaled  men, 
women,  and  children  ;  burned  a  church  with  forty  people 
in  it ;  and,  in  sheer  fiendishness,  put  out  the  eyes  of  a 


HI  HENRY   I  61 

chrisom  child  as  it  lay  in  his  arms.  The  monster  feigned 
submission  while  he  strengthened  his  castles,  and  called 
to  his  aid  the  wild  Welsh,  ever  ready  to  abet  rebellion 
and  to  maraud  in  England.  Henry  took  the  field  in 
force,  again  calling  on  the  English,  and  Bellesme's  last 
stronghold  fell.  The  Norman  nobles,  alarmed  at  the  dis- 
play of  royal  power,  had  essayed  to  mediate.  But  the 
English  in  the  king's  army  shouted  to  him  to  press  the 
siege.  Bellesme,  we  mark,  though  hated,  was  not  excom- 
municated by  his  caste,  which,  on  the  contrary,  inter- 
posed in  his  favour,  another  comment  on  the  superiority 
of  Norman  character.  A  little  money  sent  the  Welsh 
back  to  their  hills,  while  Scotland,  the  other  source  of  dis- 
turbance without,  was  kept  quiet  by  the  king's  marriage. 
By  fines,  confiscation,  and  banishment  the  great  houses  of 
the  conquest  were  brought  to  the  ground,  and  they  owed 
their  overthrow  in  part  to  the  arms  of  the  conquered  race. 
Politically  the  land  had  peace.  But  the  conflict  pres- 
ently recommenced  between  the  crown  and  the  church, 
Anselm,  the  greatest  lover  of  peace  and  charity,  being 
again  destined  to  light  the  torch  of  discord.  England 
was  involved  in  the  great  European  quarrel  between  the 
papacy  and  the  lay  powers  on  the  subject  of  ecclesiastical 
investitures.  Since  his  restoration  Anselm  had  twice 
done  the  crown  good  service.  At  the  time  of  Robert's 
invasion  he  had  brought  to  Henry  the  support  of  the 
English,  and  he  had  set  aside  by  his  religious  wisdom  a 
casuistical  objection  raised  against  the  king's  marriage 
with  Matilda,  on  the  ground  that  she  had  once,  to  escape 
violence,  put  on  the  veil  of  a  nun.  But  he  had  brought 
back  with  him  from  Italy  the  Hildebrandic  doctrine 
about  the  profanity  of  lay  investiture  and  of  doing  horn- 


62  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

age  to  lay  lords  for  ecclesiastical  fiefs,  for  which  the 
papacy  was  filling  the  German  Empire  with  parricidal 
war.  This  was  a  new  light  that  had  dawned  upon 
Anselm,  for  he  had  himself,  when  appointed  to  the  arch- 
bishopric by  Rufus,  not  only  done  homage  to  the  king 
like  a  lay  baron  for  the  temporal  fief,  but  received  with- 
out any  scruple,  from  the  king's  hand,  the  pastoral  staff 
and  ring.  He  now  refused  to  do  homage  to  the  king  for 
the  estates  of  his  see,  or  to  consecrate  bishops  who  re- 
ceived investiture  at  the  king's  hand.  The  king  insisted 
on  his  claim,  sustained  as  he  was  in  regard  to  homage  by 
the  manifest  right  of  the  state,  which  could  not  have 
brooked  the  existence  of  a  separate  realm  within  its 
realm.  In  Henry  Anselm  did  not  encounter  a  second 
Rufus,  furious  and  profane,  but  a  cool-headed,  decorous1 
statesman,  studious  of  appearance  as  well  as  tenacious  of 
his  aim,  and  one  who,  though  the  father  of  a  crowd  of 
bastards,  was  formally  religious  and  a  founder  of  relig- 
ious houses.  Henry,  till  his  throne  was  firmly  estab- 
lished, let  the  question  sleep ;  then  he  pressed  his  claim. 
Anselm,  as  before,  was  meek,  peace-loving,  loyal,  and 
always  addressed  the  king,  his  temporal  lord  and  spirit- 
ual son,  in  the  language  of  respectful  affection ;  but,  as 
before,  he  adhered  firmly  to  his  principle.  There  was 
an  appeal  to  Pope  Paschal,  who,  of  course,  decided  in 
favour  of  ecclesiastical  independence  and  aggrandize- 
ment. Henry  insisted  on  a  second  appeal.  The  Arch- 
bishop of  York  and  two  bishops  on  the  king's  part,  two 
monks  on  the  part  of  Anselm,  argued  the  case  once  more 
before  the  pope,  and  once  more  Anselm's  envoys  brought 
back  the  pope's  judgment  in  Anselm's,  that  is,  in  his  own 
favour.  The  king's  envoys  protested  that  the  pope  had 


in  HENRY   I  63 

given  them  a  different  decision  by  word  of  mouth,  and  it 
is  not  unlikely  that  the  wily  Italian  had  sought  by  cajol- 
ing them  in  private  to  temper  the  ire  of  a  mighty  king. 
In  the  great  council  which  was  held  to  settle  the  ques- 
tion, the  king's  spokesman  contended  that  a  scroll  of 
parchment  was  not  to  be  believed  against  the  word  of 
three  prelates,  and  that  the  monks  being  by  their  vows 
dead  to  the  world  could  not  be  heard  in  a  worldly  case  ; 
to  which  it  was  answered  that  the  Gospel  itself  was  a 
scroll  and  that  the  case  was  not  worldly.  The  bishops 
as  well  as  the  lay  barons  were  again  with  the  king. 
Anselm,  ever  pacific,  consented  to  a  third  reference, 
undertaking  while  it  was  pending  to  refrain  from  excom- 
municating bishops  who  had  received  lay  investiture. 
Of  this  the  king  took  advantage  to  treat  his  claim  as  con- 
ceded, to  appoint  to  bishoprics  his  chancellor  and  an 
officer  of  his  household,  and  invest  them  with  the  staff  and 
ring.  An  attempt  was  made  to  trepan  Anselm  into  con- 
secrating these  two  men  together  with  William,  Bishop- 
elect  of  Winchester,  who  had  received  the  staff  and  ring 
in  the  canonical  manner.  Anselm  having  refused,  the 
Archbishop  of  York  was  ordered  to  officiate  in  his  place ; 
but  the  faithful  William  declined  to  be  so  consecrated, 
and  the  bishops,  filled  with  confusion,  as  Eadmer  says,  at 
this  rebuff,  went,  amid  the  execrations  of  the  people,  to 
lay  their  complaint  before  the  king.  William,  standing 
firm  against  the  storm  of  reproaches  and  menaces,  was 
stripped  of  his  goods  and  expelled  the  realm,  Anselm 
seeking  justice  for  him  in  vain.  The  king  now  made  an 
opportunity  of  visiting  Canterbury  to  try  the  effect  of  a 
personal  interview  on  the  archbishop,  who  had  by  this 
time  received  from  Rome  letters  which  he  forbore  to 


64  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

publish,  directing  him  to  excommunicate  his  opponents. 
The  king  vowed  that  he  would  not  for  his  kingdom  give 
up  the  right  which  he  had  inherited  from  his  prede- 
cessors. Anselm  declared  that  he  durst  not  for  his  life 
betray  the  principle  which  he  had  heard  solemnly  laid 
down  in  the  council  at  Rome.  Tears,  Eadmer  tells  us, 
came  into  the  eyes  of  those  who  were  present  at  the 
thought  of  the  evils  which  again  impended  over  the 
church.  The  king  had  now  nothing  left  for  it  but  to  get 
Anselm  out  of  the  kingdom ;  and  he  succeeded  in  per- 
suading the  aged  primate  to  go  in  person  to  Rome.  For 
Rome  Anselm  embarked,  followed  to  the  seaside,  his 
biographer  assures  us,  by  a  great  multitude  of  people. 
The  biographer  of  a  saint  militant  is  always  anxious  to 
show  that  the  saint  had  the  people  on  his  side ;  and  it  is 
likely  that,  apart  from  reverence  for  the  holy  men  or  for 
the  priesthood,  the  people  would  be  on  the  side  of  resist- 
ance to  a  government  which  to  them  was  one  of  iron,  as 
well  as  half  alien,  while  the  clergy  were  in  themselves  a 
multitude,  and  had,  as  spiritual  masters  and  confessors, 
the  best  means  of  agitation.  At  the  papal  court  Anselm 
encountered  William  of  Warelwast,  who,  having  been  the 
envoy  of  Rufus,  now  served  Henry  on  a  like  mission. 
The  arts  of  the  tried  diplomatist  failed  to  avert  the  pope's 
decree.  Mildness  was  studied  in  the  form  of  proceeding 
against  so  powerful  a  culprit  as  the  king  of  England  by  a 
pope,  who  had  already  the  Emperor  on  his  hands;  but 
the  custom  of  investiture  was  inflexibly  condemned,  and 
those  who  should  conform  to  it  were  pronounced  excom- 
municate. In  vain,  when  Anselm  had  departed  from 
Rome,  William  of  Warelwast  lingered  behind  on  pretence 
of  paying  his  vows  to  St.  Nicholas.  The  pope  was  not  to 


in  HENRY   I  65 

be  moved  ;  the  question  was  vital  to  the  ascendancy  of 
the  papacy  and  the  priesthood. 

On  the  return  of  his  envoy  the  king  seized  the  estates 
of  the  archbishropic  into  his  hands,  appointing,  however, 
as  Eadmer  admits,  friendly  administrators,  and  gave  no- 
tice to  Anselm  that  he  was  banished  from  the  realm. 
Anselm,  for  the  second  time,  found  a  hospitable  home  with 
his  friend  the  Archbishop  of  Lyons.  In  vain,  hearing 
from  England  that  in  the  absence  of  the  chief  shepherd 
wolves  had  broken  into  the  fold,  and  that  the  church  was 
full  of  disorder  and  distress,  he  plied  the  pope  with  en- 
treaties to  interpose  effectively  for  his  restoration.  The 
pope,  engaged  in  a  death  struggle  with  the  Emperor, 
shrank  from  driving  the  king  of  England  to  extremity 
at  the  same  time.  He,  however,  excommunicated  Robert 
De  Mellent  and  the  other  advisers  of  the  king.  At  last 
Anselm  advanced  to  Normandy,  resolved  to  excommuni- 
cate the  king  himself.  Henry,  in  the  midst  of  a  struggle 
with  his  brother  for  the  duchy,  could  ill  afford  at  that 
moment  to  be  held  up  to  his  adherents  and  his  opponents 
as  an  excommunicated  man,  and  to  have  the  whole  moral 
force  of  the  church  thrown  into  the  scale  of  his  enemy. 
The  old  Countess  of  Blois,  Adela,  sister  of  Henry,  and 
a  spiritual  daughter  of  Anselm,  brought  about  a  meeting 
at  which  the  king  showed  himself  anxious  for  peace  ; 
and  after  some  further  haggling  and  more  references  to 
Rome,  a  reconciliation  was  effected.  Anselm  returned  1107 
to  England  and  to  his  archbishopric  amidst  the  jubilation 
of  the  clergy  and  the  people,  as  well  as  to  the  great  joy 
of  the  pious  Queen  Matilda,  who  had  earnestly  pleaded 
for  his  restoration,  and  preceded  him  wherever  he  went, 
heading  the  procession  which  was  formed  to  meet  him, 
VOL.  i  —  5 


66  THE  UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

and  providing  for  his  triumphant  reception.  The  great 
question  was  compromised.  On  the  part  of  the  arch- 
bishop it  was  conceded  that  bishops  and  abbots  should 
do  homage  as  tenants  of  the  crown  for  their  fiefs  to  the 
king  ;  on  the  part  of  the  king  that  they  should  receive 
investiture  as  shepherds  of  the  church  with  the  ring  and 
staff,  not  from  their  lay,  but  from  their  spiritual  superior. 
The  renunciation  of  the  king  bound  all  other  lay  patrons. 
It  was  a  fair  compromise  according  to  the  notions  of  the 
age.  Those,  however,  who  should  know  the  interest  of 
the  clergy  best,  think  that  they  gained  little  by  the 
result.  Anselm  ruled  his  church  in  peace,  holding  his 
synods  and  pursuing  his  reforms  till  the  age  of  seventy- 
six.  Once  more  we  are  made  to  feel  that  if  ever  eccle- 
siastical privilege  was  a  moral  influence,  and  a  curb  on 
immoral  power,  it  was  in  the  person  of  this  man,  who, 
if  his  biographer  has  painted  him  aright,  in  all  his  strug- 
gles showed  a  Christian  character,  ever  sought  peace, 
never  betrayed  self-interest  or  ambition,  never  forgot, 
though  he  might  misunderstand,  his  duty  to  his  national 
king. 

Anselm,  after  his  restoration,  held  a  reforming  synod. 
It  was  held  by  the  king's  leave,  and  respect  was  thus 
paid  to  the  custom  of  the  realm.  But  its  main  object 
was  to  enforce  the  Hildebrandic  rule  of  clerical  celibacy, 
by  which  the  clergy  were  cut  off  from  home  and  from 
the  commonwealth,  to  become  the  militia  of  Rome.  The 
result  showed  that  not  only  the  domestic  and  civil  char- 
acter of  the  clergy  but  their  morality  was  sacrificed  to 
papal  policy.  Few  of  them  were  Anselms,  and  not  being 
allowed  wives,  a  good  many  of  them  kept  concubines. 
Incontinence  chuckled  when  the  pope's  legate,  John  of 


in  HENRY  I  67 

Crema,  after  holding  forth  against  it,  was  himself  caught 
in  a  brothel.  The  presence  of  a  legate  as  president  of 
an  English  synod  was  itself  a  symptom  of  the  progress 
of  Rome,  though  he  had  not  come  without  the  consent 
of  the  king. 

Still  more  did  Rome  gain  by  the  extension  of  monas- 
ticism,  which  planted  her  spiritual  garrisons  in  every 
land.  Now  came  to  England  the  Cistercian  order,  the  1129 
great  revival  of  asceticism  and  of  the  angelic  life.  The 
Cistercian  angel,  like  other  angels  before  him,  presently 
folded  his  wings,  and,  the  houses  pf  his  brotherhood 
having  been  built  for  eremite  purposes  on  solitary  downs 
and  moors,  became  a  sheep-farmer  and  wool-grower,  pre- 
eminent in  his  line,  and  founded  the  chief  commercial 
industry  of  the  nation.  Still  the  monasteries,  though 
they  might  cease  to  be  outposts  of  heaven,  remained  out- 
posts of  Rome.  They  were  also  in  their  way  and  in 
those  wild  times  shelter  for  the  gentler  natures  and  for 
civilization.  Their  writing-rooms  and  libraries  preserved 
books  and  learning,  though  that  which  was  valuable  might 
bear  a  small  proportion  to  that  which  was  not.  Their 
chronicles,  almost  the  only  annals,  kept  up  the  historical 
consciousness  of  the  nation.  Church  art  and  music,  even 
mechanics,  owed  them  gratitude.  It  was  probably  for 
the  advancement  of  civilization  in  part,  as  well  as  for  the 
good  of  his  own  soul,  that  Henry  founded  monasteries, 
among  them  the  great  Abbey  of  Reading.  Whatever  1121 
quickens  intellect  generally  will  help  to  make  politics 
intellectual  and  to  render  political  struggles  less  con- 
flicts of  force  and  more  of  thought. 

The  monarchy  is  still  the  power  not  only  of  order  but 
of  progress,  and  to  the  mass  of  the  people  the  source  of 


68  THE  UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

justice,  it  may  almost  be  said  of  liberty,  since  it  comes 
between  them  and  the  local  oppressor.  Henry,  as  he 
had  promised,  made  good  peace,  continued  to  hold  down 
his  feudatories  with  a  firm  hand,  forbade  their  private 
wars,  demolished  the  castles  which  they  had  built  with- 
out royal  license.  To  the  aristocracy  of  the  conquest 
he  preferred  men  raised  by  himself  who  formed  a  new 
nobility  more  attached  and  faithful  to  the  crown.  If 
he  preferred  natives  of  Normandy  to  natives,  whatever 
their  origin,  of  England,  it  was  probably  not  in  respect 
of  race,  but  because  he  found  himself  better  served  by 
the  strangers.  Churchmen  commended  themselves  to 
him  as  ministers  by  their  superior  education,  by  their 
entire  dependence  on  their  master,  and  by  the  cheapness 
of  their  service,  since  they  could  be  paid  by  ecclesiastical 
preferment  at  the  expense  of  the  church. 

Against  his  aristocratic  enemies  Henry  provided  him- 
self with  spies,  not  unneeded  if  it  is  true  that  he  had 
traitors  at  his  board  and  narrowly  escaped  an  arrow 
shot  by  an  unknown  hand.  He  was  always  moving  over 
the  country,  chiefly,  perhaps,  to  maintain  his  household 
by  consuming  on  the  spot  the  fruits  of  his  various  de- 
mesne lands,  yet  with  the  effect  of  making  his  personal 
government  felt,  which  without  central  machinery  or 
a  post  it  could  not  otherwise  have  been.  His  punish- 
ments were  sweeping  and  ruthless,  but  they  fell  on  the 
few,  while  the  many  enjoyed  security  and  were  grateful. 
His  exactions,  the  people  thought,  were  grievous,  but 
they  were  regular  and  not  so  bad  as  baronial  pillage. 
To  levy  fines  on  priests  who  kept  concubines  was  not 
very  royal  finance  ;  but  about  the  sources  of  their  reve- 
nue none  of  these  kings  were  nice.  Henry  rendered 


ni  HENRY  I  69 

commerce  and  industry  a  great  service  by  maintaining, 
as  he  had  promised,  the  purity  of  the  coin.  Coiners  he 
ruthlessly  punished.  If  he  did  not  so  well  fulfil  his 
promise  not  to  keep  bishoprics  or  abbeys  vacant,  he 
might  plead  that  the  ecclesiastical  fief  paid  no  reliefs, 
afforded  no  wardships  or  marriages,  could  never  be  for- 
feited, and  was  bound  in  some  way  to  contribute  to 
the  necessities  of  the  crown.  The  comparative  blessings 
of  the  Lion's  rule  will  be  seen  by  contrast  with  what 
follows. 

The  monarchy  assumes  a  more  regular  form  and  de- 
velops its  machinery  of  administration.  The  standing 
council,  or  Curia  Regis,  unfolds  its  administrative  and 
fiscal  organs.  This  is  due  to  the  constructive  genius  of 
Roger,  Bishop  of  Salisbury,  the  justiciar.  Roger,  it  was 
said,  had  first  commended  himself  to  the  king  by  the 
speed  with  which  he  said  mass.  Taken  into  the  royal 
service  he  became  the  statesman  of  the  day  and  organ- 
ized the  Exchequer,  at  once  a  ministry  of  finance  and  a 
court  of  fiscal  justice.  The  name  was  derived  from  the 
chequered  covering  of  the  table  at  which  the  barons  of 
the  Exchequer  sat.  The  Exchequer,  as  .well  as  the  Curia 
Regis,  was  composed  of  barons,  and  the  justiciar  presided 
over  both.  The  judicial  power  remained  in  the  Curia 
Regis.  A  further  step  in  the  regular  organization  of 
the  monarchy  was  the  despatch  from  time  to  time  of 
royal  commissioners  over  the  realm,  both  for  fiscal  pur- 
poses and  for  those  of  justice,  an  institution  which  will 
ripen  hereafter  under  another  great  king.  Roger  of 
Salisbury  founded  an  administrative  house.  His  nephew 
Nigel  was  treasurer,  his  bastard  son  Roger  was  chancel- 
lor, and  they  preserved  his  official  system. 


70  THE  UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

Under  a  strong  and  peaceful  government,  trade  spread 
its  sail,  the  less  timidly  as  both  sides  of  the  Channel  were 
in  Henry's  hands.  The  germs  of  industry  were  fostered, 
the  life  of  the  towns  grew. 

By  the  treaty  between  the  brothers  Henry  and  Rob- 
ert, Normandy  had  been  happily  severed  from  Eng- 
land. Unhappily  they  were  united  again.  Normandy, 
under  the  misrule  of  the  losel  Robert,  fell  into  feudal 
anarchy.  Normans  who  wished  for  the  restoration  of 
order  stretched  their  hands  to  Henry ;  especially  did 
the  clergy,  who  needed  order  most,  and  with  whom 
Henry,  in  spite  of  his  quarrel  with  Anselm  and  his 
numerous  bastards,  had  preserved  his  religious  reputa- 
tion. Moreover,  the  connection  between  the  Norman 
nobles  in  the  two  countries  still  subsisting,  in  Normandy 
gathered  the  feudal  storms  which  broke  over  England. 
There  Bellesme  had  found  a  new  lair.  Henry  came  and 
1106  conquered.  At  the  battle  of  Tinchebrai,  Hastings  was 
avenged  in  the  overthrow  of  a  Norman  army  by  an  army 
which  came  from  England  and  was  partly  English.  The 
continental  province  gained,  but  the  island  kingdom  must 
have  lost  by  the  division  of  the  king's  energies  and  care. 
Robert  fell  into  his  brother's  hands,  and  the  great  cru- 
sader wore  out  the  rest  of  his  life  in  confinement.  Not 
even  the  pope's  intercession  could  open  his  prison  door. 
That  he  was  living  in  the  utmost  comfort  his  brother 
unctuously  assured  the  world.  The  relation  of  England 
and  Normandy  as  the  conquering  and  the  conquered 
country  was  now  reversed,  and  the  king  of  England  was 
mighty  among  kings. 

To  bequeath  his  greatness  to  his  one  legitimate  son, 
William,  was  Henry's  care.  All  know  the  story  of  the 


in  STEPHEN  71 

White  Ship,  how  she  went  down  at  the  Caterage  with  the  1120 
heir  on  board,  and  how,  no  one  daring  to  tell  the  king,  a 
page,  throwing  himself  at  Henry's  feet,  mutely  broke  the 
news,  after  which,  as  the  story  was,  Henry  never  smiled 
again.  The  web  of  policy  had  to  be  woven  once  more  in 
favour  of  the  king's  one  daughter,  Matilda,  the  widow  of 
the  Emperor  Henry  V.,  remarried,  little  to  her  impe- 
rial liking,  to  Fulk,  Count  of  Anjou.  No  woman  had  yet 
reigned ;  no  woman  could  perform  the  duties  of  a  Nor- 
man king.  Legitimacy  and  the  idea  of  a  proprietary 
right  to  the  crown  had  been  gaining  on  the  principle  of 
election ;  but  they  had  not  yet  got  so  far  as  this.  The 
Lion  might  have  known  that  oaths  sworn  in  his  dread 
presence  to  a  female  succession  would  be  unsworn  when 
he  was  gone. 

STEPHEN 
BORN  1094;  SUCCEEDED  1135;  DIED  1154 

Accordingly,  when  a  surfeit  of  lampreys  had  rather  in-  1135 
gloriously  sent  the  great  king  to  a  tomb  in  the  grand 
abbey  of  his  foundation,  the  barons  under  casuistical 
forms  furnished  by  the  bishops  broke  faith  with  the 
dead.  Setting  Matilda  aside,  they  gave  the  crown  to 
Stephen,  Count  of  Blois,  who  put  it  on  with  the  usual 
promises  of  good  government  and  redress  of  all  griev- 
ances. He  was  the  favourite  of  the  baronage  ;  he  was 
supported  by  his  brother,  Henry,  Bishop  of  Winchester 
and  papal  legate,  the  political  head  of  the  English 
church ;  London,  now  growing  populous  and  powerful, 
acclaimed  the  choice.  Stephen  was  a  gallant  knight  and 
a  popular  man  ;  but  as  a  ruler  he  was  weak.  At  his 
accession  he  had  allowed  his  brother  the  legate  to  draw 


72  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

him  into  too  grateful  a  recognition  of  the  support  of  the 
church,  and  even  of  the  sinister  approval  of  his  election 
by  the  pope.  To  win  popularity  he  lavishly  created  earl- 
doms, which  it  had  been  the  policy  of  the  Conqueror  to 
grant  no  more,  and  squandered  everything  else  he  had  to 
give.  At  first  he  showed  vigour  in  dealing  with  baronial 
turbulence,  but  presently  the  reins  which  it  had  tasked 
the  force  of  the  Conqueror  and  of  Henry  to  hold  began 
to  slip  from  his  hands.  His  nineteen  years  have  been 
divided  into  three  periods,  miserable  in  different  degrees  ; 
the  first  of  dissolution ;  the  second  of  civil  war  ;  the  third 
of  exhaustion  and  comparative  peace.  In  the  first  there 
are  local  revolts.  Tempted  probably  by  English  troubles, 

1136  the  king  of  Scots  invades  England  with  a  motley  host  of 
savages,  drawn  from  the  different  races  of  his  realm,  who 
commit  their  usual  atrocities  ;  but  he  is  met  and  defeated 
by  the  Normans  combined  with  Englishmen  led  from  each 
parish  by  their  priests  under  the  consecrated  standards  of 
local  English  saints. 

Stephen  brought  on  the  crash  by  attacking  the  church, 
which  in  this  case  at  least  was  not  identical  with  religion. 
Roger,  Bishop  of  Salisbury,  the  great  statesman  of  the 
late  reign  and  founder  of  the  Exchequer,  in  serving  the 
realm  had  also  provided  well  for  himself  and  for  his  own. 
He  and  his  two  nephews,  Alexander,  Bishop  of  Lincoln, 
and  Nigel,  Bishop  of  Ely,  had  amassed  great  treasures 
and  built  castles,  the  wonder  of  the  age,  where  they  kept 
a  large  retinue  of  soldiers.  Having  reason,  it  seems, 
to  suspect  that  they  were  intriguing  against  him  with 
Matilda  and  in  favour  of  her  son,  the  grandson  of  their 
patron,  Stephen  by  a  sudden  onslaught  seized  upon  two 

1138   of  them  and  compelled  all  three  to  surrender  to  him  their 


i  H  STEPHEN  73 

castles  and  their  treasures.  Castles  and  garrisons  were 
hardly  spiritual,  but  they  were  ecclesiastical,  and  at  this 
outrage  on  the  sacred  order  the  church  was  in  a  flame. 
The  papal  legate,  Henry  of  Winchester,  turned  against 
his  brother.  The  king  appears  to  have  been  so  far  for- 
getful of  his  dignity  as,  when  arraigned,  to  appear  by 
deputy  before  a  synod  and  undergo  its  sentence.  His 
self-abasement  availed  him  little. 

Matilda  now  landed  in  England  with  her  bastard  half-  1139 
brother,  Robert  of  Gloucester,  an  able  leader,  at  her  side. 
Then  followed  nine  years  of  what  can  hardly  be  dignified 
with  the  name  of  civil  or  dynastic  war.  Government 
ceased  to  exist ;  baronial  anarchy  broke  loose.  The 
country  was  covered  with  castles  built  by  robber  barons, 
who  forced  the  wretched  people  to  work  on  them  and 
filled  them  with  Flemish,  Breton,  and  Welsh  mercenaries, 
justly,  no  doubt,  designated  by  the  English  chronicler  as 
devils.  In  these  dens,  if  the  chronicler  speaks  truth, 
those  who  had  anything  of  which  they  could  be  robbed 
were  imprisoned  and  tortured.  They  were  hung  up  by 
their  feet  in  the  smoke  of  a  fire,  suspended  by  their 
thumbs  while  a  fire  was  applied  to  their  feet,  thrust  into 
dungeons  full  of  snakes  and  toads,  crushed  in  chests  full 
of  sharp  stones.  Tight  cords  were  twisted  round  their 
heads,  sharp  collars  were  fastened  about  their  necks  so 
that  they  could  neither  sit  nor  lie.  Many  were  starved 
to  death.  One  brigand  exposed  his  prisoners,  smeared 
with  honey,  to  the  stings  of  insects.  The  husbandman 
fled  the  fields,  the  people  died  of  hunger,  towns  were 

deserted  on  the  approach  of  the  man-at-arms.     Notting-    1140, 

1153 
ham  was  burned  to  the  ground  and  the  people  carried 

off  captive.     The  Monk  of  Worcester  has  described  to  us 


74  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

1149  the  sacking  of  his  town  by  a  party  from  Gloucester  ;  the 
alarm  at  the  enemy's  approach ;  the  prayers  offered  to 
the  patron  saints ;  the  goods  of  the  citizens  hastily  car- 
ried into  the  church,  which  is  crowded  with  chests  and 
sacks,  so  that  there  is  scarcely  room  for  the  priests  ;  the 
chants  of  the  choir  mingled  with  the  cries  of  infants ; 
the  high  altar  stripped  of  its  ornaments,  the  crucifix,  the 
image  of  Mary  taken  away;  the  rich  garments  of  the 
priests  hidden  lest  they  should  be  seized  by  the  spoilers  ; 
the  arrival  of  the  enemy  with  horse  and  foot ;  the  priests 
in  their  albs  bearing  forth  in  suppliant  procession,  while 
the  bells  toll,  the  relics  of  the  patron  saint ;  the  strug- 
gle, the  storming,  the  pillage,  and  the  burning ;  the  peo- 
ple driven  off  into  captivity,  coupled  together  like  hounds, 
on  a  bitter  winter's  day ;  then  the  infliction  of  the  same 
horrors  on  Gloucester  in  its  turn.  The  need  of  a  king 
and  of  the  king's  peace  is  shown  in  a  lurid  light.  Once 
more  we  are  called  upon  to  do  homage  to  the  Norman 
genius  for  political  organization. 

Meantime  the  two  parties  carried  on  a  chaotic  and  in- 
decisive war.     At  last  Stephen  was  defeated  in  a  battle 

1141  at  Lincoln  and  taken  prisoner.  Matilda  entered  London 
in  triumph ;  but  her  imperial  haughtiness  turned  the 
scale  against  her  ;  and  the  citizens,  rising  at  the  sound 
of  their  tocsin,  expelled  her  from  the  city.  Their  fidelity 
to  the  cause  of  their  king,  and  the  spirit  which  they 
showed  in  the  expulsion  of  Matilda,  somewhat  redeem 
the  scene.  Now  the  balance  of  war  turns  again  in  favour 
of  the  royalists  ;  Robert  of  Gloucester  is  taken  prisoner  ; 

1141  Stephen  is  set  free.  Henry  of  Winchester,  the  ecclesias- 
tical kingmaker,  comes  over  again  to  his  brother's  side. 
At  last  exhaustion,  coupled  with  the  mediation  of  the 


in  STEPHEN  75 

church  in  the  person  of  Theobald  Archbishop  of  Canter- 
bury brings  peace.  The  death  of  Eustace,  Stephen's  son,  1153 
opens  the  way  for  a  treaty  giving  the  crown  to  Stephen 
for  his  life,  and  after  his  death  to  Henry,  the  son  of 
Matilda.  The  principle  of  election  is  once  more  set 
aside  by  a  dynastic  treaty. 

It  is  remarkable  that,  as  we  are  told,  no  period  was 
more  prolific  than  the  reign  of  Stephen  in  monastic  and 
religious  foundations.  The  church  alone  amidst  the 
chaos  seems  to  have  remained  something  like  a  power 
of  order.  Remorse,  perhaps,  occasionally  followed  crime, 
and  by  the  endowment  of  religious  houses  gave  back  to 
what  was  then  civilization  some  portion  of  the  fruits  of 
rapine. 


CHAPTER  IV 

HENRY  II 
BORN  1133;  SUCCEEDED  1154;  DIED  1189 

A  FTER  the  anarchy  of  Stephen  the  land  groaned 
for  a  strong  rule.  But  in  Henry  II.,  surnamed 
Plantagenet,  and  founder  of  that  line,  we  welcome  a 
power  not  only  of  order,  but  of  progress.  Nothing 
marks  the  change  of  institutions  more  clearly  than  the 
contrast  between  him  and  our  kings  who  reign  and  do 
not  govern.  This  child  of  destiny  was  but  twenty-one. 
He  was  strongly  built,  and,  we  are  told,  of  royal  aspect, 
although,  it  seems,  of  rather  a  coarse  mould,  with  a  red- 
dish complexion,  and  a  large  bullet  head ;  grey  eyes, 
bloodshot,  which  flashed  with  anger;  a  fiery  counte- 
nance, a  tremulous  voice,  a  neck  a  little  bent  forward, 
and  muscular  arms.  So  a  contemporary  paints  him. 
His  tendency  to  corpulence  was  kept  down  by  spare 
diet  and  constant  exercise.  His  activity  was  preter- 
natural and  wore  out  his  attendants.  It  made  him 
ubiquitous,  and  ubiquity,  in  an  age  before  centralized 
government,  was  a  good  quality  in  a  king.  His  hasty 
meal  over,  he  was  at  once  on  foot  again.  He  could 
not  help  talking  about  business  even  during  Mass. 
Hunting  was  his  rest  from  serious  affairs  and  war. 
Next  to  the  chase  he  loved  books,  for  he  had  been  well 

76 


CHAP,  iv  HENRY   II  77 

educated,  and  his  memory  was  strong.  His  energy  and 
capacity  as  a  ruler  are  felt  at  this  hour.  But  out  of  him, 
as  out  of  the  other  men  of  his  time,  the  savage  had  not 
yet  been  worked.  He  was  liable  to  fits  of  rage,  in  which 
his  eyes  became  bloodshot  and  his  tongue  raved,  in  which 
he  flung  himself  on  the  floor  and  bit  the  rushes  with 
which  it  was  strewn ;  in  which  he  could  commit  acts  of 
cruelty,  such  as  mutilating  a  score  of  hostages.  Nor 
was  he  free  from  the  cunning  of  a  savage.  Among  his 
ancestresses  of  the  line  of  Anjou  there  was  supposed  to 
have  been  a  fiend. 

He  had  good  use  for  his  omnipresent  activity.  By 
birth,  treaty,  or  marriage,  Henry  was  lord  not  only  of 
England,  with  the  subsequent  addition  of  Ireland,  but 
of  Normandy,  Maine,  Anjou,  Aquitaine,  and  presently  of 
Brittany.  His  realm  extended  from  the  Cheviots  to  the 
Pyrenees.  He  was  a  greater  power  in  France  than  the 
king  of  France  himself,  though  by  the  strange  usage  of 
feudalism  he  was  there  the  French  king's  vassal.  He 
was  lord  in  fact  of  an  Angevin  empire,  the  seat  of  which, 
if  it  had  one,  was  Chinon,  and  its  mausoleum  Fontevraud. 
His  influence  in  Europe  was  almost  paramount.  But  in 
England  only  was  he  the  king.  Only  on  England  has 
he  left  his  mark.  He  would  perhaps  have  left  on  her 
too  deep  a  mark  had  his  energetic  love  of  power  been 
brought  to  bear  on  her  alone. 

Henry's  first  care  was  to  raze  the  illicit  castles  and  rid  1155 
the  country  of  mercenary  bands.  Many  of  the  castles 
were  probably  little  more  than  stockades.  Some  were 
strong  and  sustained  sieges  which  Henry  conducted  in 
person.  The  work  on  the  whole  seems  to  have  been 
done  with  surprising  ease,  considering  that  at  this  time, 


78  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

to  the  advantage  of  feudal  mutiny,  the  defence  was 
superior  to  the  attack,  so  that  a  siege  became  commonly 
a  blockade.  Some  wild  spirits  may  have  been  taken  off 
by  the  crusades.  Having  reduced  the  last  strongholds 
of  anarchy,  seen  the  back  of  the  last  of  the  robber  bands, 
and  resumed  the  estates  of  the  crown,  which  the  weak- 
ness of  Stephen  had  given  away,  Henry,  now  master  of 
his  realm,  entered  on  a  course  of  reform  and  .organiza- 
tion. He  took  his  grandfather  for  his  model  and  out- 
stripped him.  For  the  policy  of  making  a  national 
monarchy  supreme  over  the  baronage  he  had  a  clearer 
field  than  Henry  I.  After  the  series  of  suppressed  rebel- 
lions under  the  first  three  kings  and  the  civil  war  under 
Stephen  little  of  the  aristocracy  of  the  conquest  was  left. 
Little  or  nothing  was  now  left  even  of  the  distinction 
between  the  races.  -They  were  being  rapidly  blended  by 
intermarriage.  Presentment  of  Englishry  in  cases  of 
murder  had  become  a  dead  letter,  or  a  mere  pretext  for 
levying  on  the  district  one  of  the  fines  which  formed  no 
small  source  of  the  royal  revenue.  If  Norman-French 
was  still  spoken  by  the  ruling  class  while  English  was 
spoken  by  the  people,  this  was  more  a  matter  of  rank 
and  fashion  than  of  race.  Many  must  have  spoken  both 
languages,  while  the  neutral  Latin  was  the  language  of 
the  church,  law,  and  the  state. 

What  the  razings  of  baronial  castles  and  the  expul- 
sions of  baronial  mercenaries  had  begun  was  carried  for- 
ward by  the  military  policy  of  the  king.  His  Assize, 
1181  or  edict,  of  Arms,  reorganizing  the  old  fyrd,  or  national 
militia,  and  bidding  every  freeman  provide  himself  with 
a  coat  of  mail,  helmet,  shield,  and  lance,  placed  at  his 
disposal  a  force  independent  of  feudal  tenure  or  com- 


iv  HENRY   II  79 

mand.  Availing  himself  of  the  unwillingness  of  the 
barons,  now  settled  in  their  English  homes,  to  serve  on 
an  expedition  to  Toulouse,  he  introduced  the  payment  1159 
of  scutage,  or  shield  money,  in  place  of  the  feudal  ser- 
vice, thus  lowering  the  military  spirit  of  the  barons  at  the 
same  time  that  he  gained  the  means  of  taking  into  his 
pay  regular  soldiers,  Bretons  or  Flemings,  whose  only 
law  was  that  of  the  camp,  and  who  served  without  limit 
of  time.  The  plan  of  service  by  delegation,  three 
knights  clubbing  to  send  one,  which  was  also  intro- 
duced by  Henry,  would  tend  in  the  same  direction. 
Only  once,  however,  and  at  a  mortal  crisis,  did  the  king 
bring  his  mercenaries  to  England. 

The  administrative  system  of  Henry  I.,  which  had 
been  wrecked  by  the  civil  war,  was  restored  and  im- 
proved. Nigel,  Bishop  of  Ely,  nephew  of  Roger,  Bishop 
of  Salisbury,  the  great  minister  of  Henry  I.,  became 
treasurer  of  the  exchequer,  which  office  passed  from  him 
to  his  son  Richard,  Bishop  of  London,  who  wrote  a 
famous  treatise  on  the  organization  and  work  of  the 
department.  Centralization,  depression  of  the  feudal 
aristocracy,  and  government  through  the  devoted  ser- 
vants of  the  crown,  are  leading  features  of  the  policy. 
The  justiciars,  however,  of  this  reign,  regents  during 
the  king's  long  absences,  are  not  churchmen  like  Flambard 
or  Roger  of  Salisbury,  but  laymen,  Ranulph  De  Glan- 
ville  and  Richard  De  Lucy.  A  life  of  faithful  service 
had  earned  for  De  Lucy  the  name  of  "the  loyal"  when 
he  went  into  a  monastery  of  his  own  founding  to  give 
his  remaining  days  to  God.  Not  all  the  servants  of  the 
crown  were  loyal  like  De  Lucy.  In  those  days,  as  now 
in  Turkey  and  in  Russia,  official  corruption  was  almost  a 


80  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CIIAI. 

matter  of  course  ;  and  in  passing  judgment  on  the  policy 
of  a  king  we  must  bear  in  mind  not  only  the  character 
of  the  matter  with  which  he  had  to  deal,  but  that  of  the 
instruments  with  which  he  had  to  work. 

To  carry  royal  justice  through  the  realm  and  maintain 
the  king's  peace  as  well  as  to  enforce  the  proprietary 
rights  and  fiscal  dues  of  the  crown,  Henry  I.  had  occa- 
sionally sent  out  itinerant  justices,  the  barons  of  his 
court,  like  the  Missi  of  Charlemagne,  over  the  realm. 
His  grandson  made  the  institution  regular  and  perma- 
nent. When  the  royal  justices  went  their  rounds,  the 
shires  were  required  to  present  to  them  the  local  offenders 
with  the  evidence  of  the  crime.  Local  delegates,  twelve 
in  number,  presented  on  their  own  sworn  evidence.  This 
was  the  first  stage.  When  the  jury  were  ill  informed 
of  the  facts,  further  evidence  was  called  in.  Those  who 
gave  it  became  in  the  end  the  witnesses,  the  original 
jury  of  presentment  becoming  judges  of  the  fact  upon 
the  evidence  of  the  witnesses,  while  the  royal  judge 
laid  down  the  law.  Such  is  the  historical  origin  of  trial 
by  jury,  the  mythical  origin  of  which  is  depicted  in 
the  frescoes  of  the  House  of  Commons.  The  steps  by 
which  the  institution  reached  its  perfect  form  the  legal 
antiquary  must  explain.  Traces  of  its  original  character 
may  be  found  in  the  grand  jury  which  still  presents 
prisoners  for  trial,  and  perhaps  in  the  coercion  which 
was  long  applied  under  arbitrary  kings  to  jurymen  who 
failed  to  find  verdicts  for  the  crown,  as  if  they  had  still 
been  responsible  presenters  of  the  fact. 

The  political  importance  of  an  institution  which  places 
personal  liberties  under  the  shield  of  a  popular  court  was 
hardly  less  than  its  judicial  importance.  In  spite  of 


iv  HENRY   11  81 

grave  imperfections  and  notwithstanding  tyrannical  in- 
terference, it  long  made  England  an  oasis  of  public  justice 
in  a  Europe  of  dark  and  arbitrary  tribunals.  Jury  trial 
was  necessarily  open,  and  it  precluded  the  use  of  the 
rack,  which  was  never  legal  in  England,  though  privily 
introduced  by  usurping  power.  It  also  played  no  un- 
important part  in  the  political  education  of  the  people. 
Its  germs  were  in  all  the  rude  popular  tribunals  of  primi- 
tive times.  But  it  took  form  under  the  first  Plantagenet. 
It  has  now  gone  the  round  of  the  civilized  world. 

By  the  circulation  of  royal  justice  that  of  the  feudal 
manor  court  and  of  the  shire  and  hundred  courts  under 
the  local  influence  of  feudal  lords  was  thrown  into  the 
shade,  while  the  shire  and  the  hundred  were  brought  into 
closer  and  more  active  union  with  the  crown. 

Legislation,  in  the  proper  sense  of  the  term,  there  has 
hardly  yet  been.  The  custom  of  the  realm  has  been 
declared  by  the  general  council  of  barons  in  such  a  case 
as  that  of  Anselm.  Otherwise  there  have  been  only 
edicts  of  the  king.  For  redress  of  grievances  the  people 
have  looked,  not  to  remedial  legislation,  but  to  the 
charter  put  forth  by  the  king  at  his  accession.  By  royal 
favour,  not  by  legislative  enactment,  franchises  have  been 
granted.  But  it  is  difficult  to  distinguish  the  constitu- 
tions and  assizes  framed  by  Henry  II.  with  the  advice  of 
the  general  council  from  declaratory  acts  of  parliament 
or  statutes.  The  king  apparently  listens  to  the  advice  of 
the  council  and  relies  on  its  support.  So  far  there  is 
progress  towards  a  constitution. 

The  Assize  of  Clarendon  regulating  criminal  law  and    1164 
procedure  is  a  landmark  in  legal  history.      The  ordeal 
was  an  appeal  to  heaven  by  man's  primitive  incapacity 


82  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

for  weighing  evidence.  The  day  for  its  abolition  was 
not  yet  come,  though  the  church,  to  her  credit,  con- 
demned it.  But  by  the  assize  of  Clarendon  its  operation 
is  restricted,  and  the  man  who  has  passed  it,  if  otherwise 
convict,  is  compelled  to  abjure  the  realm.  By  another 
assize  in  cases  of  title  to  estate  or  advowsons  option  is 
given  of  a  rational  trial  by  sworn  recognition  in  place  of 
wager  of  battle.  The  judicial  combat  was  retained  in  cases 
of  honour  or  chivalry,  as  they  were  called,  and  in  cases 
of  treason.  An  islet  on  the  Thames  near  Reading  formed 
1163  the  lists  in  which  Henry  of  Essex,  constable  and  stand- 
ard-bearer, accused  of  betraying  the  standard  of  the 
king  in  the  Welsh  war,  met  his  accuser,  Robert  De 
Montfort,  in  judicial  combat,  and,  being  vanquished, 
found  shelter  in  the  neighbouring  abbey,  where  he 
assumed  the  cowl. 

The  creation  of  earldoms,  territorial  commands  with  a 
local  revenue  attached,  discountenanced  by  the  prudence 
of  William,  renewed  on  a  large  scale  by  the  lavishness 
of  Stephen,  had  once  more  ceased,  and  earls  had  become 
rare.  The  chief  local  offices,  financial,  administrative, 
and  military,  were  now  the  shrievalties,  which  were  prob- 
ably in  the  hands  of  the  great  local  feudatories,  with  a 
tendency  to  hereditary  succession.  This  stronghold  of 
feudalism  also  the  royal  reformer  invaded.  Twenty 
sheriffs  were  dismissed  at  once,  ostensibly  for  malversa- 
tion. Of  malversation  as  well  as  of  extortion,  it  is  likely 
enough  that  in  those  rude  and  predatory  times  they  were 
guilty.  But  the  king's  chief  motive  probably  was  his 
desire  of  transferring  the  government  of  the  shire  from 
the  local  feudatory  to  more  trustworthy  and  controllable 
hands.  The  necessity  of  perfecting  the  official  organiza- 


iv  HENKY   II  83 

tion  would  be  enhanced  by  the  long  absences  of  Henry 
from  England. 

Hitherto  custom,  tribal  or  feudal,  has  reigned.  Now 
the  spirit  of  law  is  abroad,  and  the  science  of  jurispru- 
dence is  born  again.  Roman  law  is  once  more  studied, 
and  by  its  scientific  method  takes  hold  of  the  higher 
minds.  It  gives  birth  to  a  profession,  and  opens  to 
those  learned  in  it  a  career  of  wealth  and  power.  It 
forms  the  model  for  those  who  are  building  up  the  canon 
law  of  the  church,  which  again  is  emulated  by  the  civil 
jurist.  A  teacher  of  it  had  appeared  in  England  under 
Stephen,  but  had  been  silenced  by  political  jealousy  or 
by  fear  of  ecclesiastical  encroachment.  The  feudal  law- 
yers, however,  though  they  would  not  allow  their  customs 
to  be  ousted  by  Roman  principles,  bowed  to  the  scientific 
method  of  the  Roman  law,  and  helped  themselves  freely 
to  its  philosophic  store.  In  the  treatise  ascribed  to 
Ranulph  De  Glanville,  a  justiciar  of  Henry  II.,  an  at- 
tempt is  made  to  give  something  like  Roman  regularity 
to  the  rude  heap  of  feudal  or  national  customs.  The 
author  is  the  patriarch  of  the  common  law. 

The  epoch  is  memorable  in  which,  from  the  will  of  a 
king  whose  power  has  no  limit  but  revolt,  and  whose  very 
excellence  is  dangerous  to  freedom,  a  community  passes 
under  the  reign  of  law.  The  study  of  law,  at  once 
practical  and  philosophic,  stimulates  intellect,  and  the  pro- 
fession which  is  formed,  however  liable  to  pedantry  and 
chicane,  is  on  the  whole  a  guardian  of  right,  both  public 
and  private,  under  a  free  government ;  while  even  such 
a  despotism  as  that  of  the  Tudors  or  the  Bourbons  is  in 
some  measure  limited  and  tempered  by  the  authority  of 
written  law. 


84  THE   UNITED  KINGDOM  CHAP. 

The  same  tendency  to  substitute  national  for  feudal 
machinery  which  appears  in  government  under  Henry's 
reign  appears  also  in  finance.  A  regular  land-tax,  after- 
wards called  carucage,  is  imposed  in  place  of  the  obsolete 
danegelt.  Scutage  is  in  effect  a  substitution  of  taxation 
for  service.  Henry,  however,  no  doubt  like  other  kings 
in-  those  days,  took  all  that  he  could  get ;  imposts,  old  or 
new,  regular  or  irregular,  including  fines  and  composi- 
tions for  offences  real  or  factitious,  sale  of  royal  favours, 
of  offices  in  church  and  state,  of  heiresses  in  marriage,  of 
the  custody  of  the  estates  of  royal  wards.  The  people 
groaned,  as  they  always  groaned  under  taxation,  and  the 
louder,  the  more  regular  the  taxation  was.  The  necessi- 
ties of  government  they  could  not  see.  There  was  in 
those  days  no  budget,  no  understanding  between  govern- 
ment and  people  as  to  the  need  of  supply,  or  as  to  the 
purposes  to  which  the  supply  was  to  be  devoted.  A  very 
odious  source  of  royal  revenue  was  the  Jewry,  practising 
usury  under  the  king's  protection  and  paying  to  him  a 
large  part  of  its  gains,  which  was  now  organized  as  a 
regular  department  of  finance. 

The  English,  no  doubt,  had  to  pay  for  their  king's  wars 
in  France.  On  the  other  hand,  they  had  the  benefit  of 
trade  with  his  French  dominions  as  well  as  with  Germany, 
whose  friendship  his  diplomacy  secured.  The  whole  west- 
ern coast  of  France,  with  the  arteries  of  trade,  was  in  his 
hands.  Putting  down  the  license  of  private  coinage,  he 
gave  commerce  the  sound  currency  which  is  her  life. 
Special  privileges  were  granted  to  the  merchants  of 
Cologne.  Wealth  increased  with  law  and  order ;  towns, 
with  town  life  and  its  political  influences,  grew. 

From  the  repression  of  lay  crime  the  king  turned  to 


iv  HENRY   II  85 

repression  of  crime  among  the  clergy,  and  at  the  same 
time  to  the  rectification  of  the  boundary  line  between 
the  ecclesiastical  and  the  civil  jurisdiction.  William  the 
Conqueror,  while  he  sternly  repelled  papal  encroachment, 
had  so  far  complied  with  high  church  principle  as  to 
divide  the  ecclesiastical  jurisdiction  from  the  civil.  Ec- 
clesiastical tribunals  were  usurping  suits  really  civil,  such 
as  those  relating  to  property,  wherever,  as  in  cases  of 
marriage  and  legitimacy,  the  church  could  pretend  to 
a  voice,  and  to  advowsons ;  while  behind  them  were 
creeping  onwards,  to  the  subversion  of  royal  authority 
and  of  national  independence,  the  appellate  jurisdiction 
and  the  autocracy  of  the  Holy  See.  There  was,  in  fact, 
no  assignable  limit  to  the  pretensions  of  the  church  or 
of  the  pope  as  its  absolute  head.  Man  cannot  be  divided 
into  soul  and  body.  He  who  is  master  of  the  soul  is 
master  of  man,  and  he  who  holds  the  keys  of  heaven  and 
can  cut  off  from  eternal  life  is  master  of  the  soul.  The 
conflict  between  the  ecclesiastical  and  the  lay  power  in 
the  middle  ages  was  irrepressible  and  internecine. 

The  discipline  of  the  church  was  lax.  Secularism, 
nepotism,  simony,  pluralism,  and  sinecurism  prevailed,  if 
we  may  trust  the  satire  of  the  age,  to  a  scandalous  extent. 
Rich  church  preferment  was  given  to  boys.  Bishops 
were  courtiers  or  fighting  barons,  and  were  not  ashamed 
of  having  bastard  children.  Under  Stephen  we  have 
seen  bishops  closing  the  gates  of  their  castles  against 
the  crown.  The  salt  of  monasticism  had  lost  its  savour. 
Concubinage  was  common  among  the  clergy  and  could 
not  fail  to  deprave.  The  minor  orders  swarmed  with 
vagabonds  who  had  nothing  clerical  about  them  but  the 
tonsure,  and  among  whom  murder  and  robbery  were  rife. 


86  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

Yet  the  tonsure  protected  from  justice.  The  ecclesiasti- 
cal courts  claimed  the  criminal,  who  was  still,  according 
to  clerical  theory,  a  part  of  the  soul  of  the  world,  not  to 
be  punished  by  the  profane  arm  of  flesh  ;  while  penal- 
ties which  the  ecclesiastical  courts  under  canon  law  could 
inflict,  or  would  probably  wish  to  inflict,  were  inadequate 
to  the  suppression  of  crime.  It  was  reported  to  the  king 
by  his  justiciars  that  in  the  nine  years  of  his  reign  more 
than  a  hundred  murders,  together  with  a  number  of  rob- 
beries and  other  offences,  had  been  committed  by  clerks 
whom  the  lay  jurisdiction  could  not  reach.  In  the  last 
reign  an  archdeacon  had  administered  poison  to  his  arch- 
bishop in  the  eucharistic  cup  and  as  a  churchman  had 
escaped  justice.  Even  among  the  hierarchy  not  secular- 
ism only  but  violence  prevailed.  Soon  after  this  the 
chronic  struggle  between  the  archbishops  of  Canterbury 
and  York  about  precedence  leads  to  an  affray  in  a  church 
council  in  which  the  Archbishop  of  York  is  sorely  mauled 
by  the  monks  attendant  on  his  rival. 

With  a  contested  case  before  him,  the  king  moved. 
But  here  he  came  into  conflict  with  the  spirit  of  the  age. 
Hildebrandic  principles  of  church  privilege  and  suprem- 
acy had  been  gaining  ground.  They  were  steadily  pushed 
forward  by  a  power  unswerving  in  its  aim,  raised  by  its 
self-created  divinity  above  scruple  in  the  choice  of  its 
means,  and  supported  by  the  corporate  spirit  of  a  power- 
ful order  working  in  its  interest  through  all  nations. 
They  found  support  in  the  False  Decretals,  making  the 
papacy  the  supreme  and  universal  court  of  appeal,  and 
in  the  development  of  the  canon  law.  Henry  IV.  of 
Germany  had  been  humbled  by  Hildebrand ;  Barbarossa 
was  about  to  be  humbled  by  Pope  Alexander  III.  The 


iv  HENRY  II  87 

crusades  had  put  the  pope  at  the  head  of  the  armies  of 
Christendom.  They  had  filled  the  world  with  religious 
enthusiasm  and  kindled  a  wild  passion  for  martyrdom. 
During  the  anarchy  under  Stephen  the  church  in  Eng- 
land, keeping  her  organization,  had  advanced  her  power. 
Under  Henry  a  memorable  champion  of  church  privilege 
arose  in  the  person  of  Thomas  Becket. 

We  have  to  gather  the  history  of  this  canonized  cham- 
pion and  martyr  of  clerical  privilege  chiefly  from  pane- 
gyrical biographers,  who  make  heaven  announce  his  birth 
through  prophetic  dreams ;  who  ascribe  to  him,  living 
and  dead,  miracles  countless  and  portentous ;  and  in 
whose  eyes  veracity,  if  it  took  from  the  honour  of  the 
saint,  would  have  been  sin.  He  was  the  son  of  a  London 
citizen  of  Norman  name  and  race.  He  was  well  educated, 
and  at  Bologna  studied  papalizing  law.  Received  into 
the  ecclesiastical  and  high-church  household  of  Theobald, 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  he,  by  his  brilliant  gifts,  hand- 
some person,  and  engaging  manners  made  his  way,  rose 
in  his  master's  favour,  was  employed  in  important  busi- 
ness, bore  a  part  in  the  negotiations  which,  by  preventing 
the  recognition  of  Eustace,  secured  to  Henry  the  succes-  1152 
sion  of  the  crown,  and  in  connection  with  that  affair  was 
sent  to  Rome,  where  he  no  doubt  imbibed  Roman  ideas. 
To  qualify  himself  for  preferment  he  took  deacons'  orders, 
and  preferment  was  showered  on  him.  He  was  invested  1154 
with  the  archdeaconry  of  Canterbury,  the  best  thing  after 
the  bishoprics,  with  the  provostship  of  Beverley,  and  with 
several  prebends  or  benefices  besides.  From  the  service 
of  the  archbishop  he  passed  to  that  of  the  king  and  was 
made  chancellor  or  secretary  of  state,  an  office  which, 
though  then  not  the  highest,  brought  him  close  to  the 


88  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

king's  person.  He  became  Henry's  most  trusted  coun- 
sellor, bosom  friend,  and  boon  companion.  He  is  credited 
with  the  king's  policy,  but  this  remained  the  same  after 
their  rupture  and  was  a  bequest  from  Henry  I.  As 
chancellor  he  handled  large  sums  of  money,  including  the 
revenues  of  all  vacant  sees,  abbeys,  and  benefices  in  the 
gift  of  the  crown.  His  style  of  living  was  most  sump- 
tuous, his  hospitality  was  profuse,  his  establishment  was 

1158  magnificent.  As  ambassador  he  entered  Paris  with  a 
parade  resembling  and  surpassing  a  modern  Lord  Mayor's 
show,  and  scattered  money  among  the  Parisians  with  both 
hands.  He  served  the  king  not  only  in  council  but  in 
war,  slaying,  ravaging,  and  burning,  as  his  biographers 
complacently  tell  us,  without  mercy.  When  Henry 
scrupled  to  attack  the  person  of  his  suzerain  the  French 
king,  Becket  scrupled  not.  All  this  time  he  was  holding 
his  archdeaconry  and  his  other  ecclesiastical  preferments, 
so  that  of  secularism,  pluralism,  and  sinecurism  he  was  a 
palmary  example.  His  biographers  aver,  and  would  in 
any  case  have  averred,  that  amidst  all  his  luxury  the 
saint  kept  his  purity  unstained.  Becket  as  chancellor 
seems  to  have  pushed,  if  he  did  not  devise,  a  scheme  for 
taxing  the  clergy,  which  caused  the  high  churchmen  to 
say  that  he  had  plunged  a  sword  into  the  bowels  of  his 
mother.  Here  apparently  was  the  man  who,  if  placed  at 
the  head  of  the  church,  would  help  the  king  to  put  limits 
to  ecclesiastical  jurisdiction  and  bring  clerical  crime 
under  the  sword  of  justice.  When,  by  the  death  of 
Theobald,  the  archbishopric  of  Canterbury  fell  vacant, 
the  king  announced  to  Becket  his  intention  of  making 

1162  him  archbishop.  Becket  said  afterwards  that  he  warned 
the  king ;  he  did  not  undeceive  him ;  and  he  must  have 


iv  HENRY   II  89 

known  that  by  his  previous  conduct  his  master  had  been 
misled.  He  accepted  the  appointment,  however,  and  was 
thrust  by  the  lay  power  on  the  electors,  who  might  well 
be  scandalized  at  the  promotion  of  so  notorious  a  world- 
ling to  the  headship  of  the  English  church. 

Character  does  not  suddenly  change  in  middle  age,  but 
aims  sometimes  do.  Becket  would  now  be  the  English 
Hildebrand,  the  head  of  a  realm  within  the  realm,  wield- 
ing a  power  independent  of  national  law  and  above  that 
of  the  temporal  ruler.  He  threw  up  the  secular  office  of 
chancellor.  We  are  told  that  he  changed  his  life,  prac- 
tised asceticism,  wore  a  hair  shirt  till  it  swarmed  with 
vermin,  every  day  washed  the  feet  of  twelve  poor  men, 
and  was  profuse  in  his  almsgiving.  He  kept  up  great 
outward  state  and  pomp ;  but  this  was  a  proof  of  his 
humility,  as  he  thus  veiled  his  austerities  from  the  eyes 
of  men.  That  he  set  himself  to  reform  the  church  his 
biographers  assure  us ;  but  to  two  great  abuses,  pluralism 
and  sinecurism,  he  was  bound  to  be  kind,  since  he  had 
not  only  himself  been  one  of  the  greatest  of  pluralists  and 
sinecurists  before  his  appointment  to  the  archbishopric, 
but  after  his  appointment  had  continued  with  his  arch- 
bishopric to  hold  the  rich  archdeaconry  of  Canterbury. 

Suits   arose   about    fiefs    and   advowsons    claimed  for 
Becket's  see.     These  he  proceeded  to  treat  as  matters  of 
ecclesiastical  jurisdiction  and  to  decide  in  his  own  favour. 
In  the  course  of  one  of  them  he  broke  a  law  of  the  realm   1163 
by  excommunicating  without  notice  to  the  king  a  tenant- 
in-chief  of  the  crown.     Nor  was  it  long  before  he  came 
into  collision  with  the  king  himself  on  a  fiscal  question. 
Plere  he  gets  the  credit  of  having  anticipated  Hampden  in   1163 
patriotic  resistance  to  taxation,  though  it  does  not  appear 


90  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

that  he  was  resisting  taxation  of  any  but  church  lands,  or 
on  grounds  broader  than  that  of  church  privilege.  High 
words  passed,  and  Becket  showed  that  he  felt  little  rever- 
ence for  the  king.  He  assumes  towards  the  king  hence- 
forth the  airs  of  a  spiritual  father,  which  in  one  who  had 
so  lately  been  Henry's  boon  companion  must  have  been 
difficult  to  bear. 

When  Henry  disclosed  his  design  of  curbing  the  eccle- 
siastical courts,  and  bringing  clerical  crime  within  the 
grasp  of  the  law,  war  between  him  and  the  primate  broke 
out.  After  some  preliminary  fencing,  in  the  course  of 
which  Becket  seems  to  have  professed  his  willingness  to 
submit,  saving  his  order,  that  is,  saving  all  the  preten- 
sions of  the  clergy  and  the  pope,  a  pitched  battle  between 
the  two  theories  was  fought  before  the  council  of  barons 
1164  and  prelates  at  Clarendon.  Sixteen  constitutions,  declar- 
ing the  relations  between  church  and  state  as  to  matters 
of  jurisdiction,  were  there  promulgated  on  the  part  of  the 
king.  They  formed,  in  effect,  a  declaratory  act  of  the 
great  council,  setting  forth  the  established  custom  of 
the  realm  as  found  by  the  council  or  by  those  who  dic- 
tated its  finding.  Clerks  accused  of  crime  were  to  be 
arraigned  first  in  the  king's  court,  which  might  at  its  dis- 
cretion send  them  to  an  ecclesiastical  court.  If  convicted 
in  the  ecclesiastical  court  and  degraded,  the  clerk  was  to 
lose  his  benefit  of  clergy,  and  become  amenable  to  lay 
justice.  No  prelate  or  other  ecclesiastic  was  to  leave  the 
realm  without  the  king's  license,  or  without  giving  se- 
curity that  he  would  attempt  nothing  against  the  king  or 
kingdom,  an  enactment  the  object  of  which  was  evidently 
to  restrict  resort  to  Rome.  Appeals  were  to  be  carried 
from  the  archdeacon  to  the  bishop,  from  the  bishop  to  the 


iv  HENRY   II  91 

archbishop,  and  in  the  last  resort  to  the  king  in  the  arch- 
bishop's court,  but  never  to  the  pope  without  the  consent 
of  the  king.  Without  the  leave  of  the  king  sentence  of 
excommunication  was  not  to  be  pronounced  against  any 
tenant-in-chief  of  the  crown.  Archbishops  and  bishops 
were  to  hold  their  estates  as  fiefs,  subject  to  the  feudal 
obligations.  They  were  to  be  elected  in  the  king's 
chapel,  with  the  assent  of  the  king  and  his  council. 
Cases  of  church  property  and  advowsons  were  to  be  tried 
in  the  civil  courts.  The  right  of  sanctuary  was  not  to 
protect  goods  forfeited  to  the  crown.  Protection  was 
given  to  laymen  against  stretches  of  power  on  the  part  of 
the  ecclesiastical  courts.  Serfs  were  not  to  be  ordained 
without  the  consent  of  their  lords.  All  the  articles  but 
the  last  seem  to  have  been  agreeable  to  the  manifesto  of 
the  Conqueror  and  the  custom  of  the  realm,  as  well  as  to 
reason  and  the  first  principles  of  jurisprudence.  William 
had  with  his  own  hand  arrested  the  Bishop  of  Bayeux  for 
breach  of  secular  fealty.  In  his  reign  the  suit  for  church 
property  relating  to  the  see  of  Canterbury  between 
Archbishop  Lanfranc  and  Odo  of  Bayeux  had  been  tried 
by  a  county,  court  on  Pennenden  Heath.  The  restric- 
tions on  papal  interference  were,  in  effect,  those  which 
the  Conqueror  had  imposed.  Fancy  has  pitched  on  the 
article  forbidding  the  ordination  of  serfs  without  the  con- 
sent of  the  lords,  and  Becket,  for  resisting  that  enact- 
ment, has  been  held  up  as  the  tribune  of  an  oppressed 
people  and  a  subject  race.  There  is  nothing  of  this  in 
the  biographies  or  in  the  voluminous  correspondence  of 
Becket  and  his  friends.  When  the  constitutions  were 
laid  before  the  pope  he  divided  them  into  two  sets,  the 
tolerable  and  the  intolerable  ,  and  the  article  respecting 


92  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

the  ordination  of  serfs  was  in  the  tolerable  set.  That 
ordination  did  open  a  door  to  the  serf  is  true ;  let  the 
church  have  full  credit  for  it.  But  the  constitution  was 
not  intended  to  close  that  door  ;  it  was  intended  simply 
to  guard  the  property  of-  the  lay  lord.  The  church 
preached  emancipation  as  a  good  deed ;  yet  she  held  serfs 
herself,  though  probably  in  mild  bondage,  to  the  last. 
It  seems  also  that  she  restrained  her  own  serfs  from 
ordination.  The  decision  of  the  pope  respecting  this 
constitution  is  fatal  to  the  existence  of  anything  like  a 
definite  intention  on  her  part  to  make  her  orders  the 
means  of  elevation  for  the  serf.  Nothing  that  in  reality 
was  God's  was  taken  from  God  by  any  of  the  consti- 
tutions. 

From  the  policy  of  the  king,  thus  formally  presented, 
Becket  at  once  recoiled.  The  question  whether  it  was 
good  for  the  church  of  Christ  to  harbour  crime  seems  not 
to  have  presented  itself  to  his  mind.  The  church's  privi- 
lege was  to  be  upheld.  Should  the  hands  which  made 
God  be  bound,  asks  a  follower  of  Becket,  like  those  of  a 
mere  layman,  behind  the  priestly  back  ?  The  hands  of 
the  minor  orders,  in  which  crime  chiefly  prevailed,  did 
not  make  God.  The  bishops,  nominees  of  the  crown, 
good  worldly  men,  besought  the  primate  to  give  way  and 
avert  the  wrath  of  the  king.  Some  Templars,  whose 
order  was  now  at  the  zenith  of  its  reputation,  added  their 
entreaties.  Becket  at  last  yielded,  swore,  and  permitted 
the  bishops  to  swear,  to  the  constitutions ;  but  vowed 
that  he  would  not  seal.  Afterwards,  for  having  sworn, 
he  put  himself  to  penance,  and  suspended  himself  from 
the  service  of  the  altar  till  he  should  be  absolved  by  the 
pope.  In  the  sequel  he  advised  the  bishops  that  the  oath 


iv  HENRY  II  93 

which  they  had  taken,  being  sinful,  was  null   and  void. 
It  was  not  easy  to  make  terms  with  such  a  power. 

The  council  met  again  at  Northampton,  whither  Becket  1164 
came  with  a  great  train.  The  king's  savage  temper 
now  broke  out,  and  he  put  himself  in  the  wrong.  He 
had  summoned  the  archbishop  in  a  contumelious  man- 
ner through  the  sheriff,  instead  of  summoning  him  per- 
sonally, like  other  magnates.  He  now  tried  to  crush  him 
by  getting  the  council  to  condemn  him  for  contempt  of 
the  king's  court  in  a  lawsuit.  Then  he  charged  him  with 
malversation.  Becket  had  no  doubt,  as  chancellor,  spent 
great  sums  in  splendid  living  as  well  as  in  his  gorgeous 
embassy,  but  his  accounts  had  been  passed ;  at  all  events, 
the  charge  was  barred  by  time  and  the  subsequent  con- 
duct of  the  king.  A  stormy  scene  ensued.  Barons  and 
bishops,  though  on  the  king's  side,  shrank  from  the 
extremity  of  condemning  their  primate,  and  each  order 
tried  to  shift  the  task  upon  the  other.  Becket's  soul  rose 
up  in  defiance.  After  celebrating  the  mass  of  the  proto- 
martyr  Stephen,  with  its  threatening  Introit  Etenim 
Sederunt  Principes,  he  entered  the  assembly,  uplifting  his 
cross  in  his  own  hands  as  a  standard  of  spiritual  war.  In 
the  debate,  or  rather  altercation,  which  ensued,  he  thun- 
dered high-church  doctrine  in  its  extreme  form,  protesting 
that  he  owed  for  none  of  his  possessions  service  to  any 
earthly  lord,  and  warning  the  earl  who,  on  a  civil  charge, 
was  about  to  pronounce  the  sentence  of  the  assembly, 
against  condemning  his  father.  At  last  he  left  the  hall 
amidst  a  volley  of  insults,  which,  the  soldier  rising  within 
him,  he  returned  in  kind.  By  the  common  people,  his 
panegyrists  say,  he  was  received  with  enthusiasm  ;  but 
they  admit  that  not  only  the  lay  members  of  his  house- 


94  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

hold,  his  knights  and  noble  pages,  but  forty  clerks  who 
had  basked  in  the  summer  sunshine  of  his  prosperity,  now 
1164  left  him  like  swallows  at  the  coming  of  winter.  He 
withdrew  by  stealth,  not  having  the  king's  leave,  from 
the  realm,  passed  over  to  France,  and  there,  unlike 
Anselm  in  all  things,  presently  threw  himself  into  the 
arms  of  his  sovereign's  antagonist,  Louis,  who  welcomed  an 
instrument  of  mischief,  and  provided  him  with  a  guard  of 
honour.  To  clear  himself  of  the  taint  of  lay  nomination, 
he  afterwards  surrendered  his  archbishopric  to  the  pope, 
and  received  it  back  from  the  pope's  hand,  committing 
therein  something  like  an  act  of  treason.  On  his  depart- 
ure from  the  kingdom  without  the  royal  permission,  which 
was  a  breach  of  allegiance,  his  estates  were  sequestrated 
by  the  king. 

The  principles  proclaimed  by  Becket  at  Northampton 
amounted  to  nothing  less  than  the  subjection  of  the  state 
to  the  church,  and  the  exemption  of  an  immensely 
wealthy  and  powerful  order,  an  order  whose  wealth  and 
power  were  growing  always  and  without  limit,  from  the 
law.  If  the  champion  of  such  principles  was  able  by  his 
hold  on  the  superstition  of  the  age  and  his  sacramental 
thaumaturgy  to  convulse  society,  and  thus  compel  the 
submission  of  the  government,  the  government  could  deal 
with  him  only  in  one  of  two  ways,  by  throwing  itself  at 
his  feet  or  by  taking  him  by  the  throat. 

Then  followed  six  years  of  tangled  controversy,  Becket 
appealing  to  the  pope  to  launch  the  papal  thunderbolt 
against  the  king,  identifying  himself  with  Christ  and  his 
opponents  with  Satan,  storming  not  only  against  the  king 
and  his  other  English  enemies,  but  against  the  weakness, 
perfidy,  and  venality  of  Rome,  who,  if  half  of  what  he 


iv  HENRY  II  96 

says  is  true,  must  have  been  a  strange  mother  of  Chris- 
tendom ;  the  pope,  who  was  an  Italian  statesman  and, 
being  hard  pressed  by  an  anti-pope  with  the  Emperor 
at  his  back,  feared  to  make  the  king  of  England  his 
enemy,  temporizing  and  vacillating ;  the  king  and  the 
bishops  who  took  his  part  appealing,  trying  the  arts  of 
diplomacy,  and  not  only  of  diplomacy,  but  of  bribery,  to 
which,  it  was  held  by  both  sides,  Rome  was  open.  Fresh 
fuel  is  heaped  upon  the  flames  when  the  king,  having 
determined  to  get  his  eldest  son  Henry  crowned  in 
his  own  lifetime,  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  being  in 
exile,  has  the  ceremony  performed  by  the  Archbishop  of  1170 
York.  This  was  taking  from  the  primate  a  part,  perhaps 
regarded  by  him  as  more  than  honorary,  in  the  election  of 
the  king,  and  Becket's  wrath  blazed  out  anew.  The 
king's  cause  is  pleaded  by  Gilbert  Foliot,  Bishop  of 
London,  whose  austere  virtue  and  famed  learning  add,  in 
the  minds  of  Becket's  admirers,  piquancy  to  his  inevitable 
damnation  as  an  opponent  of  the  church's  champion  and 
favourite.  Becket  strives  to  put  heaven  on  his  side  by 
increased  asceticism  ;  wears  not  only  a  hair  shirt  but  hair 
drawers,  both  swarming  with  vermin,  multiplies  the 
flagellations  which  he  had  commenced  from  the  time  of 
his  conversion  to  the  rate  of  five  a  day.  So  his  hagio- 
graphers  assure  us,  although  the  Abbot  of  Pontigny  play- 
fully tells  him  that  one  who  loved  wine  as  he  did  could 
hardly  be  a  martyr.  Already,  according  to  his  biogra- 
phers, he  performs  miracles.  A  fish  leaps  into  his  bosom 
to  provide  food  for  the  fast-day ;  a  maggot  which  drops 
from  his  sleeve  while  he  sits  beside  the  queen  of  France 
is  turned  into  a  pearl.  Betaking  himself  to  the  shrine 
of  Vezelay,  after  prayer  to  St.  Drausius,  who  gave 


96  THE  UNITED  KINGDOM  CHAP. 

victory  in  duels,  he  mounts  the  pulpit,  and  with 
the  awful  forms  of  the  Roman  ritual  launches  curses 
against  his  enemies,  including  De  Lucy  the  Loyal,  who 
had  really  acted  towards  him  as  a  friend.  The  king 
shows  himself  not  wanting  in  the  temper  which  belonged 
to  the  Angevin  stock.  He  banishes  Becket's  kindred  to 
put  pressure  by  their  destitution  on  the  archbishop  ;  he 
compels  the  Cistercians  by  threats  of  sequestration  to  expel 
Becket  from  their  House  of  Pontigny.  The  French  king, 
from  enmity  to  his  English  rival,  countenances  Becket 
and  Becket's  principles,  showing  the  advantage  which,  in 
the  conflict  between  church  and  state,  the  church  had  in 
her  unity,  while  her  antagonists  were  divided  and  she 

1170  could  play  one  of  them  against  another.  At  last  all 
parties  are  worn  out;  Henry  yields;  Becket  is  restored 
to  his  see  and  to  the  possessions  which,  upon  his  un- 
licensed departure  from  the  realm,  had  been  seized  into 
the  king's  hands.  He  comes  to  England,  but  instead  of 
peace  brings  with  him  a  renewal  of  war ;  launches  sen- 
tence of  excommunication  against  the  Archbishop  of  York 
and  two  other  bishops  who  had  offended  him ;  moves 
about  the  country  stirring  up  the  people.  On  Christmas 
Day  he  mounts  the  pulpit,  and,  taking  "  Peace  on  earth  " 
as  his  text,  again  pours  out  curses  on  his  enemies,  the  De 
Brocs,  who  as  receivers  of  his  estates  during  sequestration 
had  wasted  his  property  and  had  since  cut  off  his 
horse's  tail,  with  others  who  had  offended  him,  conclud- 
ing by  dashing  a  candle  on  the  ground  in  token  of  their 
extinction.  The  king,  who  is  in  France,  hearing  all  this, 

1170  lets  fall  a  hasty  word.  Fired  by  it,  four  of  his  knights 
cross  to  England ;  force  themselves  into  the  chamber 
where  the  archbishop  after  dinner  is  conversing  with  the 


iv  HENRY   II  97 

monks  of  his  chapter ;  engage  in  a  fierce  altercation 
with  him ;  return  armed  as  he  is  going  to  vespers  in  the 
cathedral ;  renew  the  altercation,  in  which  he  calls  one  of 
them  a  panclar ;  try  to  carry  him  out  of  the  sacred  place  ; 
and,  on  his  resistance,  slay  him  there.  1170 

Of  Christ  in  Becket's  character  there  is  little  trace, 
except  the  courage  of  martyrdom.  Nor  was  he  the 
champion  of  any  cause  but  clerical  privilege.  In  that 
cause  he  fought  stoutly  and  died  bravely.  In  passing 
judgment  on  his  case,  we  have  to  determine  how  far 
privilege,  in  itself  unreasonable  and  noxious,  might  in 
that  stage  of  civilization  be  useful  as  a  bar  against  the 
despotism  of  kings.  That  sympathy  is  due  to  the  papacy 
or  the  church  as  a  moral  power  contending  against  a 
power  not  moral  seems  a  fallacy.  Superstition,  again  it 
must  be  said,  is  no  more  moral  than  force.  To  effect  its 
ends  it  has,  in  fact,  to  become  force.  The  Norman  con- 
quest of  England  countenanced  by  a  pope,  the  civil  wars 
kindled  in  Germany  by  the  popes  in  their  struggle  for 
supreme  power  with  the  Emperor,  the  extermination  of 
the  Albigenses,  the  Avars  of  the  League,  the  massacre  of 
St.  Bartholomew,  the  persecution  in  the  Netherlands,  the 
work  of  the  Spanish  Inquisition,  that  of  the  Jesuits  in  the 
Thirty  Years'  War,  the  expulsion  of  the  Huguenots  — 
what  were  these  but  acts  of  force  commanded  by  super- 
stition ?  Were  they  any  the  more  spiritual  or  the  less 
criminal  because  superstition,  instead  of  doing  them  her- 
self, had  to  enlist  in  her  service,  at  the  same  time  deprav- 
ing, an  earthly  power  ? 

In  his  death  Becket  conquered.  An  electric  shock  ran 
through  papal  Europe.  The  king  fell  on  his  knees, 
solemnly  abjured  the  murder,  bowed  himself  beneath  the 

VOL.    I 7 


08  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

censure  of  the  church,  renounced  the  constitutions  of 
Clarendon,  and  afterwards  performed  at  Becket's  tomb  a 
penance  more  degrading  than  the  humiliation  of  Henry 
IV.  at  Canossa,  or  of  Barbarossa  at  Venice.  The  martyr 
of  clerical  privilege  was  exalted  to  the  skies.  Thanks  to 
the  enthusiasm  of  his  order  he  became  the  chief  saint  of 
the  English  people.  His  shrine,  a_s  readers  of  Chaucer 
know,  was  through  the  middle  ages  the  great  place  of 
pilgrimage ;  far  more  was  offered  at  it  than  at  the  altar 
of  God,  or  even  at  the  shrine  of  the  Virgin.  Wealth 
poured  in  upon  the  monks  of  Canterbury,  the  showmen  of 
the  relics.  Even  before  canonization  miracles  began  to 
be  performed.  The  collection  of  them,  which  includes, 
besides  other  portents,  the  raising  not  only  of  men  but  of 
pigs,  geese,  and  cows  from  the  dead,  are  among  the  most 
revolting  monuments  of  medieval  superstition  and  the 
direst  proofs  of  its  effects  upon  the  mind.  At  the  Refor- 
mation the  idol  was  cast  down.  In  the  present  century 
St.  Thomas  of  Canterbury  once  more  became  the  hero  of 
a  party  aiming  at  the  revival  of  priestly  power,  and  the 
subject  of  biography  hardly  less  veracious,  though  more 
subtle  and  refined  in  its  unveracity,  than  the  hagiography 
of  medieval  monks. 

The  difference  between  zeal  for  ecclesiastical  privilege 
and  zeal  for  religious  liberty  was  seen  when  a  company  of 
heretics  from  Germany,  guilty  of  no  offence  but  their 
heresy,  which  was  probably  nearer  than  was  the  teaching 
of  the  church  to  the  faith  of  the  peasants  of  Galilee,  were 
1166  in  this  same  reign  brought  before  an  ecclesiastical  tribu- 
nal, delivered  by  it  to  the  secular  arm,  scourged,  branded, 
and  turned  out  to  die  of  cold  and  hunger,  no  Becket 
raising  his  voice  in  their  defence. 


1V  HENRY   II  99 

The  constitutions  of  Clarendon  had  been  renounced, 
but  Becket's  successor,  Archbishop  Richard,  seems  to 
have  been  a  man  of  sense  and  to  have  seen  the  mischiev- 
ous absurdity  of  Becket's  principle,  which  would  cut 
both  ways,  shielding  the  murderers  of  clerks  as  well  as 
clerical  murderers.  The  murderers  of  Becket,  in  fact, 
got  off  at  last  with  penance.  Richard  compromised  so  far 
as  to  agree  that  clerks  convicted  of  breach  of  forest  laws, 
hunting  being  altogether  forbidden  to  clerks  by  the 
canons,  should  be  handed  over  to  the  secular  arm,  and 
for  that  concession  was  denounced  by  his  order.  Privi- 
lege of  clergy,  however,  long  continued  more  or  less  to 
shield  crime  from  public  justice. 

It  seems  to  have  been  partly  to  shun  the  storm  of 
obloquy  which  clerical  fury  had  raised  against  him,  and 
to  reinstate  himself  at  the  same  time  in  the  good  graces 
of  the  papacy,  that  Henry  undertook  the  conquest  of 
Ireland.  We  have  come  to  the  first  attempt  at  a  union 
of  the  islands,  and  to  the  opening,  so  fate  would  have  it, 
of  seven  centuries  of  woe.  In  the  long  line  of  popes 
Nicholas  Breakspear,  Adrian  IV.,  is  the  only  English- 
man. English  he  was  by  birth,  by  adoption  Italian.  He 
had  some  time  before  this  issued  in  favour  of  the  king  1155 
of  England  a  missive  granting  him  "the  dominion  of 
Ireland,  of  which  the  pope  claimed  a  right  to  dispose, 
on  the  ground,  it  appears,  that  by  the  Donation  of  Con- 
stantine,  a  palpable  forgery,  islands  belonged  to  the 
Holy  See.  The  condition  of  the  grant  was  church  reform 
in  the  Roman  sense.  The  Irish  church,  a  surviving  mem- 
ber of  the  church  of  Roman  Britain,  was  barely  in  the 
Roman  communion  and  far  from  being  in  perfect  obedi- 
ence to  Rome.  It  was  not  organized  on  the  Roman 


100  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

model;  such  organization  as  it  had  was  monastic  and 
rude  in  character ;  it  had  hardly  a  diocesan  episcopate ; 
it  had  no  parochial  system  or  tithes ;  it  allowed  marriages 
within  the  prohibited  degrees;  its  services,  its  baptis- 
mal service  among  others,  lacked  the  perfect  beauty  of 
holiness.  It  was  oppressed  by  the  native  chiefs,  who 
quartered  themselves  on  it  as  they  did  on  their  lay  de- 
pendents, and  by  lawless  appropriation  thrust  themselves 
into  its  preferments.  A  marvellous,  almost  miraculous, 
period  of  missionary  enterprise,  during  which  Irish  mis- 
sionaries preached  not  only  to  Ireland  but  to  the  north 
of  England  and  to  Germany,  and  of  which  the  romantic 
memory  hallows  the  islet  of  lona,  had  been  succeeded  by 
depression,  corruption,  and  subjection  to  barbarous  power. 
Irish  church  reformers  had  stretched  their  hands  to  Canter- 
bury and  Rome.  The  Anglo-Saxon  conquest  of  Ireland, 
like  the  Norman  conquest  of  England,  partook  of  the 
character  of  a  crusade. 

The  lonely  island  of  the  west  had  escaped  Roman  con- 
quest. It  had  escaped  Saxon  conquest.  By  the  Dane  it 
had  been  visited,  and  its  monasteries  had  been  ravaged, 
but  he  had  only  founded  some  little  settlements  on  its 
coast.  Those  settlements,  however,  were  about  the  only 
germs  of  commerce  or  civilization,  and  they  showed  their 
affinity  to  the  civilization  of  the  Anglo-Norman  kingdom. 
The  Celts  who  peopled  the  rest  of  the  island  had  remained 
in  the  tribal  or  clan  state  without  any  general  polity  or 
settled  tendency  to  form  one,  though  the  chiefs  of  power- 
ful septs  might  for  a  time  gain  such  an  ascendancy  over 
their  neighbours  as  to  assume  the  style  of  kings.  Nor  was 
there  any  general  law  saving  the  Brehon  law,  the  work 
of  priests  or  bards,  fancifully  minute  and  elaborate,  but 


IT  HENRY   II  101 

without  regular  authority  to  enforce  it.  Blind  attach- 
ment founded  on  supposed  kinship  of  the  clansman  to 
his  chief  was  the  only  political  organization.  Tribal  war 
was  incessant,  and  its  axe  was  in  every  hand.  To  unifi- 
cation the  bogs  and  the  great  forests  which  then  clothed 
the  country  were  opposed.  The  climate  being  too  wet 
for  grain,  agriculture,  the  mother  of  civilization,  was  rare. 
The  people  remained  pastoral,  and  had  hardly  ceased  to 
be  nomad.  Cities  there  were  none,  save  the  little  sea- 
board cities  of  the  Dane.  The  Celts  had  risen  but  few 
steps  above  the  savage  state,  and  are  painted  by  a  keen 
contemporary  observer  as  showing  the  impulsiveness, 
fickleness,  and  treachery  of  the  savage.  They  loved  the 
harp,  and  displayed  an  aptitude  for  decorative  art,  and,  it 
seems,  a  thirst  for  learning  when  its  cup  was  put  to  their 
lips.  Traditions,  probably  exaggerated,  of  a  vast  gather- 
ing of  learned  men  under  the  auspices  of  the  church  haunt 
the  now  lonely  and  melancholy  site  of  Clonmacnoise. 
But  the  church,  herself  unorganized,  could  do  little  to 
unify  or  civilize  the  nation.  Without  cities  she  could  not 
be  stately  or  impressive.  Tribal  barbarism  trampled  her 
under  its  hoofs.  Her  monuments  are  not  cathedrals,  but 
the  Round  Towers,  which  probably  served  as  refuges  for 
the  priests  and  sacred  vessels  when  the  country  was 
swept  by  the  plundering  tribes. 

Tribal  quarrels,  as  usual,  opened  the  country  to  the 
invader.  Dermot,  a  chieftain  who  had  been  worsted  in  a 
deadly  feud,  craved  the  aid  of  the  English  king.  Henry  1169 
had  other  matters  on  his  hands,  but  he  gave  Dermot  leave 
to  enlist  adventurers.  Dermot  turned  to  the  northern 
chiefs,  who  had  been  pushing  the  conquest  into  Wales, 
but  having,  it  seems,  lightly  squandered  what  they  had 


102  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

lightly  won,  were  ready  for  a  new  enterprise.  At  their 
head  was  Richard  De  Clare,  Earl  of  Pembroke  and  Stri- 
guil, surnamed  Strongbow.  Striguil  sent  before  him  to 
Ireland  his  associates,  Maurice  Fitzgerald  and  Robert 
Fitzstephen,  with  small  bodies  of  knights  and  archers. 
The  first  landing  of  the  invaders  was  in  Bannow  Bay. 
As  the  Spaniard  was  to  the  Mexican,  so  was  the  Norman 
with  his  mailed  horsemen  and  his  bowmen  to  the  naked 
Celt,  though  the  Dane  made  a  better  stand.  The  natives 
were  defeated  with  great  slaughter,  and  a  pile  of  heads 
having  been  made  after  the  victory,  Dermot  picked  out 
the  head  of  his  personal  enemy  and  tore  it  with  his 
teeth.  Striguil  presently  appeared  in  person  on  the 
scene,  and  amidst  a  reign  of  blood  and  havoc  created 
himself  Earl  of  Leinster.  He  was  on  the  point  of  found- 
ing an  Anglo-Norman  principality  in  the  island. 

Fear  of  that  result  and  of  its  consequences  to  his  own 
kingdom  probably  concurred  with  other  motives  in  at- 
tracting Henry  himself  to  Ireland.  His  presence  brought 
the  Anglo-Normans  back  to  their  allegiance,  and  he 
received  the  transient  homage  of  the  Celtic  chiefs.  He 
reformed  the  church,  superficially  at  least,  after  the  Eng- 
lish, that  is  the  Roman,  pattern.  He  annexed  the  domin- 
ion of  Ireland  to  his  crown,  while  he  acknowledged  the 
pope  as  grantor,  and  undertook  to  pay  him  an  annual 
tribute  of  Peter's  pence.  He  had  been  on  the  point  of 
extending  the  conquest,  and  securing  it  by  castles,  when 
he  was  unluckily  called  away  by  the  storm  which  clerical 
hatred  and  feudal  mutiny  had  together  raised  against 
him.  He  left  behind  him  at  first  a  viceregal  government, 
on  the  home-rule  principle,  the  vicegerent  being  Roderick, 
1185  a  native  chief.  Afterwards  his  favourite  son,  John,  was 


rv  HENRY   II  103 

sent  over  as  his  vicegerent.  It  apparently  was  Henry's 
intention  to  make  John  king,  but  the  worthless  boy  only 
showed  his  folly  by  insulting  the  natives;  the  conquest 
remained  incomplete  ;  the  island  was  permanently  divided 
between  two  hostile  races  ;  and  the  fatal  <Jie  was  cast. 

As  a  rule  the  church  was  on  the  side  of  the  king 
against  the  feudatories,  but  in  the  storm  which  now 
burst,  and  to  meet  which  Henry  left  Ireland  unsub- 
dued, clerical  revenge  was  mingled  with  the  wrath  of 
the  great  barons,  who  could  no  longer  endure  the 
centralizing  and  levelling  policy  of  the  king.  The 
sweeping  dismissal  of  the  sheriffs  had  probably  cut  the 
high  aristocracy  to  the  heart.  The  king  of  Scots  joined  1173 
the  conspiracy  and  invaded  England,  hoping  to  annex 
Northumberland.  The  jealousy  of  the  king  of  France 
was  always  at  work  against  his  too  powerful  vassal.  It 
was  to  conjure  the  clerical  element  of  the  storm  that 
Henry  performed  his  penance  at  the  shrine  of  the  martyr 
of  Canterbury.  The  struggle  on  both  sides  of  the  water 
was  severe,  but  the  event  proved  the  soundness  of  the 
government.  Many  of  the  barons  remained  loyal.  The 
common  people  both  in  country  and  town  wherever  they 
appeared  in  the  field  were  for  the  king.  With  the  help 
of  these  and  of  the  mercenaries,  who  for  the  first  and  only 
time  were  brought  to  England,  the  king  and  his  ever- 
loyal  De  Lucy,  who  now  rendered  his  greatest  and  his 
last  service,  gave  the  hydra  of  rebellious  feudalism  a 
decisive  and  final  overthrow.  The  victory  was  completed 
by  a  politic  clemency,  surprising  in  so  passionate  a  nature 
as  that  of  Henry.  No  blood  was  shed,  though  fines  no 
doubt  augmented  the  treasure  which  the  king  accumu- 
lated alike  by  exaction  and  parsimony  as  the  condition 


104  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

of  his  free  exercise  of  power.  William,  king  of  Scots, 
having  fallen  as  a  prisoner  into  Henry's  hands,  was 
compelled  to  do  homage  for  his  kingdom,  so  that  for  a 
moment  there  was  a  union  of  the  island.  Perfect  calm 
ensued,  and  it  seemed  that  Henry's  sun  would  go  down 
in  splendour  and  in  peace. 

At  the  close,  however,  there  came  another  storm,  not 
in  England,  but  in  the  possessions  over-sea,  and  as  the 
result  of  Norman  mutiny  combined  with  French  jealousy, 
while  on  the  rising  gale  rode  the  ever-restless  spirit  of 
Bertrand  De  Born,  a  troubadour,  whose  life  was  intrigue, 
satire,  and  battle,  the  companion  and  tempter  of  Henry's 
sons.  Let  admirers  of  medieval  or  Norman  character 
mark  the  repeated  occurrence  of  parricidal  and  fratri- 
cidal war.  The  son  of  William  the  Conqueror  makes 
war  upon  him ;  his  three  sons  make  war  upon  each 
other;  Henry  of  Winchester  abets  those  who  are  mak- 
ing war  upon  his  brother  Stephen;  the  three  sons  of 
Henry  II.,  Henry,  Richard,  and  John,  make  war  upon 
their  father.  Henry's  sons  are  prompted  to  treason 
by  his  queen,  who  might  find  some  excuse  in  his  roving 
loves.  To  settle  the  succession  which,  it  must  be  inferred, 
was  still  insecure,  Henry  had  caused  his  eldest  surviving 
son  and  namesake  to  be  crowned  in  his  own  lifetime ;  a 
perilous  measure  which,  with  the  infusions  of  Bertrand 
De  Born  and  other  intriguers,  awoke  in  the  silly  boy  a 

1183  desire  to  be  at  once  a  king.  His  two  other  sons,  Richard 
and  his  ill-chosen  favourite  John,  took  part,  the  first 
openly,  the  second  secretly,  in  the  plot  of  which  the 
prime  mover  was  the  able  and  unscrupulous  Philip 

1183  Augustus,  now  king  of  France.  Young  Henry  died  ;  he 
died  in  an  agony  of  remorse,  desiring  the  clergy  who 


iv  HENRY  II  105 

were  with  him  to  drag  him  from  his  bed  with  a  rope 
round  his  neck  and  lay  him  on  the  ashes.  Deathbed 
repentance  was  better  than  none,  as  it  might  impress  the 
survivors,  but  its  supposed  efficacy  was  a  dangerous  part 
of  the  spiritual  system.  Young  Henry  had  conjured  his 
father  to  come  to  him.  But  in  those  days  of  chivalry  the 
old  king  feared  treachery,  and  could  only  send  a  ring  in 
token  of  his  forgiveness  and  affection.  Richard  and  John, 
with  the  king  of  France,  carried  on  the  war,  and  Henry, 
overpowered,  was  forced,  at  a  humiliating  conference,  to 
place  himself  at  the  mercy  of  the  French  king,  and  to  1189 
agree  to  a  treaty  by  which  he  made  over  to  the  undutiful 
Richard  a  part  of  his  dominions.  The  treaty  signed,  he 
asked  to  see  a  list  of  the  conspirators,  and  his  spirit  sank 
when  at  the  head  of  the  list  appeared  the  name  of  his 
favourite  John.  "  Now,"  he  cried,  "  let  things  go  as  they 
will.  I  care  no  more  for  myself  or  for  the  world." 
Chinon,  in  its  summer  beauty,  had  received  the  broken- 
hearted and  dying  king.  Only  Geoffrey,  his  bastard  son, 
was  at  his  side,  and  performed  to  him,  as  he  tossed  upon 
his  fevered  couch,  the  last  offices  of  love.  With  the  deli- 
rium of  his  disease  mingled  the  agony  of  defeat.  "  Shame! 
shame!  "  he  kept  crying,  "upon  a  conquered  king!  "  He 
did  not  know  what  great  things  he  had  done. 

While  the  mighty  monarch  was  dying,  servants  whom    H89 
his   bounty  fed   had  been  plundering  the  house.     They 
stripped  his  body  and  left  it  on  the  ground  naked  till  a 
knight  covered  it  with  his  cloak.     This  it  was  in  Henry's 
days  to  be  a  king. 


CHAPTER   V 

RICHARD    I 
BORN  1157;  SUCCEEDED  1189;  DIED  1199 

riPHOUGH  in  France  the  career  of  Henry  of  Anjou  had 
closed  in  disaster,  in  England  his  work  stood  firm.  Tri- 
umphant over  the  mutinous  aristocracy,  rooted  apparently 
by  its  benefits,  its  sternness  and  the  weight  of  its  taxation 
notwithstanding,  in  the  allegiance  of  the  people,  served  by 
a  trained  staff  of  able  ministers,  and  with  a  regular  army 
of  mercenaries  on  which  to  call  at  need,  while  the  war- 
like character  of  the  feudal  array  had  been  impaired  by 
scutage  and  substitution,  the  monarchy  had  become  almost 
absolute.  The  lawyers,  who  had  drunk  of  the  Roman 
fountain,  were  imperialist  in  spirit.  A  jurist  of  Henry 
II.'s  reign  had  cited  from  the  imperial  code  as  applicable 
to  his  king  the  maxim  that  the  will  of  the  prince  is  law. 

1176,  The  writer  of  the  Dialogue  on  the  Exchequer,  a  bishop  in 
the  service  of  the  crown,  had  laid  down  the  doctrine  that 
kings  are  above  human  justice  and  responsible  to  God 
alone,  almost  in  the  terms  in  which  it  was  laid  down  by 
the  ecclesiastical  flatterers  of  Charles  I. 

1189  Richard  I.  mounted  his  father's'  throne  without  the 
slightest  opposition,  and  without  putting  forth  any  charter 
of  concessions,  though  he  made  the  usual  promises  of  good 
government.  He  was  crowned  with  a  magnificence  which 
bespoke  the  exaltation  of  the  monarchy  as  well  as  his  own 

106 


CHAP,  v  RICHARD   I  107 

pride  and  love  of  pomp.  Had  he  been  a  statesman  and 
stayed  at  home  to  govern,  the  monarchy  might  have 
become  a  despotism,  but  he  was  a  knight-errant,  and  his 
reign  in  England  almost  ended  with  his  coronation.  In- 
stead of  the  rule  of  a  strong  king,  there  was  a  divided 
and  distracted  regency,  while  the  confusion  caused  by  the 
weakness  of  the  government  was  increased  by  the  disloyal 
ambition  of  Richard's  brother,  John. 

England  was  a  member  of  the  religious  federation  of 
Latin  Christendom.  She  had  to  bear  her  part  in  the 
mortal  struggle  between  that  federation  and  Islam.  It 
was  a  conflict  not  only  between  Christ  and  Mahomet,  but 
between  liberty  and  despotism,  between  monogamy  and 
polygamy,  between  progressive  effort  and  the  apathy  of 
fatalism,  between  the  influence  which  has  done  most  to 
civilize  Europe  and  that  which  has  blighted  Mahometan 
Asia.  It  was  not  alone  for  the  Holy  Land  that  war  was 
waged;  the  tide  of  Mahometan  conquest  rolled  to  the 
plain  of  Tours,  and  was  there  arrested  only  after  desperate 
and  long  doubtful  battle  by  Charles  Martel.  The  holy 
places  might  be  legendary,  pilgrimage  to  them,  crusades 
for  them,  might  be  folly,  the  choice  of  Palestine  as  the 
field  of  battle  might  be  a  military  and  political  mistake; 
but  it  was  the  Sepulchre  that  called  forth  the  enthusiasm, 
that  gave  Christendom  a  mark  for  concentrated  effort  and 
an  all-inspiring  battle  cry.  The  Sepulchre  had  fallen  into 
the  hands  of  the  infidel.  Europe,  stricken  to  the  heart, 
rushed  to  the  rescue.  Henry,  a  statesman  above  all  things, 
had  taken  the  cross  with  his  brother  kings;  but  he  had 
put  to  his  council  a  leading  question,  the  answer  to  which 
was  that  his  first  duty  was  at  home.  His  son  was  a  born 
crusader,  a  warrior,  and  a  knight-errant,  without  a  par- 


108  THE  UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

ticle  of  the  statesman.  Richard's  sole  thought  was  the 
crusade.  To  equip  himself  for  the  crusade  was  his  only 
care  as  king.  His  methods  of  raising  money  threw  light 
on  the  relation  between  romantic  chivalry  and  common 
honesty.  He  put  everything  up  to  sale.  He  sold  the 
domains,  honours,  and  offices  of  the  crown.  He  sold 
bishoprics  and  abbacies.  He  sold  the  hands  of  heiresses 
who  were  royal  wards  in  marriage.  He  sold  the  earldom 
of  Northumberland.  He  sold  to  the  king  of  Scots  not 
only  the  castles  of  Newark  and  Roxburgh,  but  the  sover- 
eignty over  Scotland  which  had  been  conceded  to  his 
father.  He  sold  licenses  for  tournaments,  which  might  be 
licenses  for  cabal  and  disorder.  He  extorted  three  thou- 
sand pounds  from  his  half-brother,  Geoffrey,  who  had  been 
made  Archbishop  of  York.  He  dismissed  almost  all  the 
sheriffs,  making  them  pay,  no  doubt,  for  their  restoration. 
He  wrung  a  heavy  fine,  on  what  pretext  is  not  clear,  from 
his  father's  old  and  faithful  servant,  Ranulph  De  Glanville, 
forcing  him  to  pay  by  imprisonment. 

As  England  shared  the  crusades  she  shared  the  anti- 
semitic  movement,  to  use  the  modern  name,  which  was 
allied  to  the  crusades  and  swept  over  Europe  at  the  same 
time.  The  Jew  had  been  patiently  plying  his  tribal  trade 
of  finance.  To  own  real  estate  he  was  not  at  this  time 
forbidden  by  law.  But  finance,  not  land-owning,  was  his 
line.  Christianity  recognized  the  Mosaic  law,  which  for- 
bade usury  to  be  taken  from  a  brother  ;  but  the  Jew 
could  take  it  from  the  Christian  as  a  stranger,  and  thus 
had  a  monopoly  of  the  trade.  To  the  medieval  church 
the  Jew  was  an  alien,  not  persecuted  like  the  Christian 
heretic,  though  an  object  of  religious  aversion.  In  his 
penal  homelessness  he  was  regarded  as  a  witness  to  reve- 


v  KICHARD  I  109 

lation.  The  canon  law  shielded  him  from  outrage  and  his 
children  from  forcible  conversion.  In  the  medieval  state 
he  was  the  serf  of  the  king,  who  protected  him  in  his 
extortion,  and  went  his  partner  in  its  fruits.  This  use  of 
the  Jew  as  a  financial  sponge  had  formed,  as  we  have 
seen,  an  evil  part  of  the  fiscal  policy  of  Henry  II.  In 
England,  as  elsewhere,  the  Jews  grew  rich  at  the  expense 
of  the  people,  as  the  people  thought;  though  it  is  main- 
tained on  their  side  that  they  were  useful  as  capitalists  in 
supplying  money  for  great  undertakings  and  promoting 
trade.  Instead  of  being,  as  historical  novels  represent 
him,  down-trodden,  despised,  and  crouching,  the  Jew  was 
not  less  dreaded  than  he  was  hated.  He  lorded  it  over 
his  debtors,  built  him  a  stately  dwelling,  and  loved  to  dis- 
play his  wealth.  Sometimes  he  even  ventured  to  insult 
the  national  religion.  If  he  was  confined,  or  confined 
himself,  to  the  Jewry,  this  was  less  of  a  hardship  when 
special  quarters  of  cities  for  particular  trades  or  callings 
were  the  rule.  If  kings  took  much  from  him,  they  left 
him  more,  and  he  was  exempt  from  the  heaviest  of  taxes, 
being  never  called  on  to  serve  in  war.  Beholding  the 
Jew's  mansion,  the  Englishman  said,  as  the  Russian  peas- 
ant says  now,  "  That  is  my  blood  !  "  The  excellent  abbot 
Samson  thinks  that  he  has  gained  a  blessing  for  his  people  1190 
in  clearing  St.  Edmundsbury  of  Jews.  Everywhere  the 
Hebrews  formed  a  nation  within  the  nation,  bearing  them- 
selves as  a  chosen  race,  living  apart,  regarding  their 
neighbours  as  unclean,  celebrating  their  feast  of  Purim 
with  a  demonstrativeness  perhaps  offensive  to  the  Gentile. 
It  was  not  wonderful  that  in  the  darkness  of  the  middle 
ages  popular  fancy  should  have  invested  with  imaginary 
attributes  of  malignity  that  which  to  many  was  a  real 


110  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

power  of  evil,  and  imagined  that  the  financial  oppressor 
sacrificed  Christian  children,  poisoned  the  wells,  and 
spread  the  plague. 

By  the  loss  of  the  Sepulchre,  and  the  call  to  arms  for 
its  recovery,  Christian  fanaticism  was  raised  to  frenzy. 
In  the  conflict  of  races  and  characters  the  Jew  belonged 
to  the  East,  not  to  the  West.  It  was  suspected,  perhaps 
not  without  reason,  that  his  heart  was  with  the  East,  and 
even  that  he  might  be  willing  to  open  the  postern  door. 
It  is  likely  that  he  inflamed  the  feeling  against  him  by 
practising  extortion  on  those  who  were  selling  or  mort- 
gaging all  they  had  to  fit  themselves  out  for  the  holy 
wars.  Over  Europe  hatred  of  the  Jew  flamed  forth. 
Outrage  and  massacre  ensued,  no  doubt,  on  a  hideous 
scale,  though  on  the  prodigious  numbers  given  by  medi- 
eval chroniclers  no  reliance  can  in  this  or  in  any  case  be 
placed.  Good  Christians,  like  St.  Bernard,  strove  in  vain 
to  allay  the  storm.  In  London  the  Jews  provoked  the 
wrath  of  the  populace  by  intruding  upon  the  coronation 
feast,  which  wore  a  religious  character.  A  frightful  riot, 

1189  with  wrecking  of  Jews'  houses,  pillage,  and  massacre  broke 
out.     It  spread  to  other  cities  of  the  kingdom.      By  mak- 
ing for  the  churches  in  which  the  bonds  of  the  Jews  were 
kept,  the  mob  showed  that  debt  as  much  as  fanaticism 

1190  was  the  source  of  its  fury.      At  York,  where  Jews  had 
given  special  umbrage  by  their  wealth  and  pride,  they 
found  refuge  in  the  castle,  and  defended  it  with  the  des- 
perate tenacity  with  which  their  race  had  defended  Tyre, 
Carthage,  and  Jerusalem.      When  they  could  hold  out  no 
longer  they  set  fire  to  their  treasures,  slew  their  wives 
and    children,  then  slew  themselves.      The  government 
made  some  examples,  proclaimed  the  Jews  under  its  pro- 


v  RICHARD   I  111 

tection,  and,  the  Jews  being  its  property,  exacted  on  its 
own  account  the  debts  of  those  who  had  been  slain.  The 
storm  blew  over,  and  the  Jews  were  soon  as  active  in 
their  trade,  as  wealthy,  and  as  much  feared  and  hated  as 
before. 

To  settle  the  government  and  secure  the  peace  of  the 
kingdom  during  his  absence,  Richard  divided  power  be- 
tween the  worthy  Hugh  De  Puiset,  Bishop  of  Durham,  1190 
and  the  not  so  worthy  William  of  Longchamp,  Chancel- 
lor and  Bishop  of  Ely.  The  sinister  ambition  of  his 
brother  John  he  tried  to  allay  by  gorging  him  with  es- 
tates, honours,  and  jurisdictions  at  great  expense  to  the 
crown.  The  arrangement  failed.  Longchamp,  though 
faithful  to  his  king,  was  grasping  and  arrogant,  an  in- 
triguer crooked  in  mind  as  in  body,  and  an  alien  to  boot. 
He  crushed  his  associate  Hugh,  then,  ruling  alone,  made 
himself  so  obnoxious  that  he  was  overthrown  by  a  gen- 
eral revolt.  An  opening  was  thus  made  for  the  schemes 
of  John,  who,  though  gorged,  was  not  satisfied,  and  who 
presently  found  a  confederate  in  his  brother's  deadly 
enemy,  Philip  Augustus  of  France.  Confusion  reigned, 
and  Richard's  crown  was  in  jeopardy  when  he  reappeared 
upon  the  scene. 

Meantime  he  "had  sailed  away  for  the  Holy  Land  with  1190 
a  mighty  fleet.  This  is  the  first  war  fleet  sent  "out  by 
England  after  the  conquest,  and  may  be  said  to  open  the 
history  of  the  British  navy.  Regular  navy  in  those 
times,  or  naval  administration,  there  was  none.  The 
five  ports  on  the  Channel  were  specially  charged,  as  the 
price  of  their  privileges  and  honours,  with  maritime  de- 
fence, and  were  special  seats  of  nautical  character  and 
f>f  its  tendencies  to  political  freedom.  The  king  owned 


112  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

ships,  as  sometimes  did  a  grandee.  But  the  bulk  of  the 
fleet  was  made  up  by  general  impressment  of  ships,  which 
would  be  somewhat  analogous  to  the  general  obligation 
of  landsmen  to  serve  in  the  army.  The  code  of  laws 
for  that  fleet,  extremely  strict  and  cruel,  was  Richard's 
contribution  to  the  progress  of  legislation.  England 
heard  from  afar,  not,  we  may  suppose,  without  a  thrill 
of  interest  and  some  elevation  of  national  spirit,  how 
Richard  of  the  lion  heart  and  ungoverned  temper  had 
on  his  way  to  the  Holy  Land  quarrelled  with  the  Sicil- 
ians, thrashed  them,  and  stormed  their  city;  fallen  upon 
1191  the  tyrant  usurper  of  Cyprus  and  conquered  his  island  ; 
how  he  had  attacked  and  captured  a  huge  Turkish  ship  ; 

1191  how  he  had  landed  at  Acre  amidst  the  enthusiasm  of  the 
Christian  host  which  was  besieging  it,  and  brought  new 
life  to  the  siege,  taken  the  great  city  of  the  misbelievers, 
and   butchered   thousands  of   them  in  cold   blood;    how 
he   had   outshone    the    other    crusading    princes    by   his 
prowess,  while  he  made  them  his  enemies   by  his   over- 
bearing  pride  ;    how,   when   deserted   by   them,  he   had 
continued   to   perform  marvellous  feats   of  war,  covered 
himself  with  glory,  and  won  the  admiration  and  friend- 

1192  ship  of  the  great  Saladin,  though,  betrayed  by  his  con- 
federates   and    single-handed,    he  failed   to   redeem   the 
Sepulchre.     Then  came  the  news  that,  crossing  Europe 
on  his  way  back,  he  had  been  foully  entrapped  and  held 

!192  to  ransom  by  the  Duke  of  Austria,  out  of  whose  hands 
he  had  passed  into  the  hands,  equally  mean,  of  the  Em- 
peror ;  and  that  the  customary  aid  for  ransoming  the  lord 
from  captivity  would  have  to  be  paid  by  the  country  on 
the  largest  scale.  The  papacy,  which  in  its  own  interest 
could  reduce  to  submission  Barbarossa  and  Henry  II., 


v  RICHARD   I  113 

failed   to  rescue  from  the  hands  of   a  robber  duke   and 
emperor  the  foremost  champion  of  Christendom. 

The  blackmail  demanded  by  the  imperial  brigand  was 
a  hundred  thousand  pounds,  double  the  whole  revenue 
of  the  crown.  The  means  by  which  it  was  raised  dis-  1193 
close  the  strange  medley  of  the  fiscal  system  in  a  nation 
passing  from  the  era  of  feudal  tenures,  services,  and 
dues,  to  that  of  nationality  with  national  taxation.  Each 
knight's  fee  pays  twenty  shillings.  The  royal  domains 
pay  tallage.  The  land  not  held  by  military  tenure  pays 
a  land-tax  under  the  name  of  carucage,  for  the  assessment 
of  which  a  new  survey  had  to  be  made.  Besides  this, 
a  tax  on  personalty,  one-fourth  of  revenue  or  goods,  is 
imposed  for  the  special  occasion  on  all.  From  the  Cis- 
tercians is  taken  a  fourth  of  their  wool,  now  a  staple  ; 
from  the  churches  their  plate  and  jewels.  The  gold  on 
St.  Edmund's  shrine  at  Edmundsbury  was  saved  only  by 
the  protest  of  Abbot  Samson.  When  the  tax-collector 
came  to  the  door,  the  people  no  doubt  groaned  ;  but,  on 
the  whole,  the  ransom  for  the  hero  seems  to  have  been 
freely  paid. 

Richard,  after  his  release,  tarried  barely  two  months  1194 
in  England.  War,  not  government,  was  his  element. 
This  time  his  field  of  battle  was  Normandy,  and  his 
enemy  was  Philip  of  France.  His  second  stay  was  spent, 
like  his  first,  in  raking  together  money  for  his  war. 
Again  he  sold  offices  and  everything  else  for  which  he 
could  find  a  market.  To  illustrate  once  more  the  mor- 
ality of  chivalry,  he  made  another  great  seal,  and  com- 
pelled holders  of  grants  to  have  them  sealed  anew  and 
pay  the  fees  over  again.  The  Emperor  still  retained  a 
shadow  of  European  supremacy,  the  vestige  of  imperial 


114  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

Rome.  To  bribe  his  pride,  it  seems,  Richard  had  done 
homage  to  him.  It  may  have  been  to  assure  himself  and 
his  people  of  his  being,  this  submission  notwithstanding, 

1194  still  sovereign,  that  he  repeated,  or  partly  repeated,  the 
ceremony  of  his  coronation.  At  his  departure  he  left 
England  in  the  hands  of  Hubert  Walter,  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury,  an  able  minister,  who  seems  to  have  applied 
the  administrative  and  fiscal  policy  of  Henry  II.,  though 
his  statesmanship  was  largely  engrossed  by  the  collection 
of  money  for  his  master's  war.  The  last,  and  not  least, 
notable  exploit  of  Richard  was  the  construction  of  the 

1197  Chateau  Gaillard  to  command  the  Seine  and  the  approach 
to  Rouen ;  a  work  which  showed  an  advance  of  en- 
gineering skill  not  without  its  bearing  on  politics,  since 
it  added  to  the  superiority  of  the  defence.  The  end  of 
Richard  of  the  lion  heart  resembled  that  of  Charles  XII. 
of  Sweden,  his  counterpart  in  life-long  pugnacity.  He 
met  his  death  before  a  petty  fortress,  to  the  siege  of 
which  he  had  been  lured  by  an  idle  story  of  treasure 
trove. 

That  the  government  should  have  held  together  during 
such  a  reign  shows  how  solid  the  work  of  Henry  II.  had 
been,  and  how  strong  he  had  made  the  monarchy.  Yet 
the  effect  of  a  practical  vacancy  of  the  throne  for  ten 
years  could  not  fail  to  be  felt.  Actual  progress  towards 
constitutional  government  was  in  some  respects  made. 
In  the  collection  of  Richard's  ransom  it  was  necessary 
to  make  appeals  to  the  people  which  familiarized  them 
with  the  idea  of  self-taxation,  while  the  principle  of 
representation  -was  called  into  play  by  the  local  ma- 
chinery of  assessment.  It  seems,  also,  that  for  the 
maintenance  of  order  the  regency  was  compelled  to 


v  RICHARD  I  115 

throw  itself  more  upon  local  support.  Towards  the  end 
of  the  reign,  St.  Hugh,  Bishop  of  Lincoln,  successfully 
resisted  a  demand  upon  the  estate  of  his  bishopric  for 
troops  to  serve  beyond  sea.  This,  unless  we  reckon 
Becket's  refusal  to  pay  danegelt  on  church  lands,  or 
Anselm's  refusal  to  meet  the  demands  of  Rufus,  is  the 
first  instance  of  a  constitutional  resistance  to  taxation. 
Longchamp  was  deposed  from  his  vicegerency  by  a  con- 
vention of  barons '  and  London  citizens,  which  may  be 
said  to  have  been  the  rude  prototype  of  a  convention 
parliament.  A  step  from  the  system  of  feudal  aids  and 
dues  to  that  of  national  taxation  was  taken  in  the  insti- 
tution of  carucage,  a  regular  land-tax  of  so  much  on 
every  hundred  acres,  and  when  taxation  becomes  national 
it  forms  an  object  for  national  vigilance  and  resistance. 

The  towns,  cradles  of  the  democracy  that  is  to  be,  are 
growing ;  their  liberty  is  advancing  ;  they  are  gradually 
detaching  themselves  from  the  feudal  system.  Trade 
had  flourished  under  the  broad  empire  and  the  firm  rule 
of  Henry  II.  One  by  one  the  towns  are  ceasing  to  be 
groups  of  huts  on  the  domain  of  the  king  or  of  some 
lord,  tallagable  like  the  rest,  and  under  the  jurisdiction, 
apt  to  be  oppression  and  plunder,  of  the  sheriff.  They 
are  working  and  buying  their  way  to  municipal  self- 
government.  The  form  which  their  upward  effort  takes 
is  that  of  guilds,  either  of  merchants  or  of  craftsmen  ; 
the  merchant  guild  being  the  higher  and  more  aristo- 
cratic, the  craft  guild  that  of  the  more  democratic  arti- 
san ;  guilds  of  both  kinds  being  religious  and  benevolent 
brotherhoods,  as  well  as  associations  of  trade,  narrow  and 
monopolist  in  their  policy,  as  in  those  times  they  could 
not  help  being,  and  perhaps  needed  to  be.  Charters 


116  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

were  in  course  of  time  purchased  by  the  guilds  for  a 
full  commune  or  municipality  with  its  own '  jurisdiction 
and  collecting  its  own  taxes  or  aids  instead  of  having 
them  assessed  and  exacted  by  the  sheriff.  In  England, 
as  elsewhere,  the  crown,  in  its  struggle  with  the  great 
lords,  found  allies  in  the  boroughs.  During  the  last 
feudal  rebellion  some  English  boroughs  had  suffered  in 
the  royal  cause.  If  Henry  II.,  tenacious  of  power,  was 
sparing  in  his  grant  of  municipal  charters,  Richard  sold 
them  as  freely  as  he  sold  everything  else. 

London  led  the  van  and  set  the  example  of  progress. 
That  it  could  put  twenty  thousand  horse  and  sixty  thou- 
sand foot  into  the  field,  as  a  contemporary  chronicler 
asserts,  is  incredible ;  yet  it  had  become,  for  those  times, 
a  great  and  opulent  city,  full  of  commercial  activity,  full 
also  of  social  life,  the  vigour  and  unity  of  which,  as  well 
as  the  martial  spirit  of  the  citizens,  were  kept  up  by  manly 
exercises  and  games.  It  had  established  a  regular  mu- 
nicipal government.  It  had  played  an  important  part 
in  the  election  of  Stephen  as  king,  in  the  rejection  of 
Matilda,  and  in  the  deposition  of  Longchamp.  Now  it 

1191  has  its  first  mayor.  Its  local  government  was  passing 
finally  out  of  feudal  into  commercial  hands.  It  has 
arrived  at  the  epoch  of  municipal  parties,  plutocratic 
and  democratic.  The  democracy  complained  that  the 
taxes  were  unjustly  levied  by  the  burgher  oligarchy, 
which  was  in  possession  of  the  government.  Their  dis- 

1196  content  found  a  mouthpiece  in  William  Fitzosbert,  or 
Longbeard,  an  ex-crusader,  a  man  of  great  strength  and 
stature,  a  popular  orator,  with  some  knowledge  of  law. 
He  belonged  to  a  high  civic  family,  but  had  wasted  his 
means  and  was  thrown  upon  his  wits.  It  seems  that  he 


v  KICHARD  I  117 

first  bid  for  the  favour  of  the  court,  and  in  an  unscru- 
pulous manner,  by  accusing  his  brother,  who  had  refused 
him  money,  of  treason.  He  then  turned  to  the  people, 
made  himself  the  champion  of  the  poor,  or,  as  we  should 
now  say,  of  the  masses  against  the  classes,  pushed  his 
way  into  the  council,  and  harangued  at  open-air  meet- 
ings, denouncing  the  mayor  and  aldermen.  An  outbreak, 
perhaps  the  sack  of  the  city,  appeared  imminent,  when 
the  government  came  to  the  assistance  of  the  burgher 
oligarchy,  and  Longbeard,  having  slain  one  of  the  sol- 
diers sent  to  arrest  him,  took  refuge  in  a  church,  was 
forced  from  that  sanctuary,  and,  after  a  summary  trial,  1196 
hanged  in  chains.  He  was  the  first  English  democrat 
who  suffered  for  his  cause.  His  party  styled  him  a 
martyr,  and  miracles  were  performed  at  His  tomb. 


CHAPTER  VI 

JOHN 
BORN  1167;  SUCCEEDED  1199;  DIED  1216 

TTAD  the  present  rule  of  succession  to  the  crown  been 
then  in  force,  young  Arthur,  son  of  John's  elder 
brother  Geoffrey,  would  have  been  Richard's  successor  on 
the  throne.  But  the  rule  was  not  yet  settled,  and  the 
man  was  still  preferred  to  the  boy.  John,  when  he  had 
gone  through  the  form  of  election  and  been  crowned  by 
the  archbishop,  was  rightful  king  of  England.  The  king 
of  France  and  John's  other  enemies  used  his  nephew's 
claim  against  him,  but  Arthur  fell  into  his  uncle's  hands, 
and  John  practically  settled  the  question  of  succession,  as 
all  the  world  believed,  by  the  murder  of  the  boy. 

We  must  listen  with  caution  to  the  ecclesiastical 
chroniclers  in  the  case  of  a  king  who  quarrelled  with  the 
church.  Yet  they  do  not  seem  to  have  gone  much  beyond 
the  mark  in  saying  that  John  when  he  died  made  hell 
fouler  by  his  coming.  Force,  fitful  energy,  even  flashes 
of  statesmanship  and  generalship,  he  had.  So  far  he  was 
a  Plantagenet,  but  he  seems  to  have  been  thoroughly 
wicked.  Archbishop  Hubert  in  crowning  him,  if  we  are 
to  believe  Matthew  Paris,  a  chronicler  of  liberal  tenden- 
cies in  the  next  generation,  dwelt  with  extraordinary 
force  on  his  responsibilities  as  an  elective  king,  and 
pledged  him  to  constitutional  government.  Any  such 

118 


CHAP,  vi  JOHN  119 

pledge  John  gave  to  the  winds.  His  throne  of  cruelty, 
lust,  perfidy,  and  rapine  Avas  upheld  by  mercenary  troops, 
the  scourge  of  a  nation.  To  the  father  who  fatuously 
loved  him  his  treachery  had  been  a  death-blow.  As  his 
father's  deputy  in  Ireland  he  had  displayed  his  folly  and 
insolence.  Against  his  brother  Richard,  when  Richard 
was  fighting  for  Christendom,  he  had  disloyally  con- 
spired. In  wedlock  as  in  everything  else  he  had  been 
false.  Before  his  accession  to  the  throne  he  had  married 
Hadweisa,  daughter  of  the  Earl  of  Gloucester;  but  when 
he  became  king,  desiring  a  grander  match,  he  put  her 
away  on  the  pretext  of  consanguinity,  and  married  Isa-  1200 
bella,  daughter  of  the  Count  of  Angouleme,  snatching  her 
from  the  arms  of  the  Count  de  la  Marche,  to  whom  she 
was  betrothed.  The  pope,  with  whom  John  happened 
to  be  on  good  terms,  was  silent.  So  doubtful  a  guardian 
was  the  papacy  of  the  sanctity  of  marriage  when  its  own 
policy  was  not  concerned. 

Bad  as  he  was,  and  by  reason  of  his  badness,  John  ren- 
dered two  great  services  to  England.  He  lost  Normandy; 
and  he  gave  birth  to  the  Great  Charter.  The  line  between 
the  Anglo-Saxon  and  the  Norman  had  by  this  time  been 
effaced.  In  the  legislation  of  Henry  II.  there  is  no  trace 
of  it,  no  different  ordeals  for  the  two  races,  no  present- 
ment of  Englishry.  The  great  conquest  families  had 
either  died  out  or  wrecked  themselves  in  rebellion.  Still 
Normandy  was  a  focus  of  feudal  mutiny,  while  its  pos- 
session made  the  king  of  England  only  a  half-English 
king,  and  the  nobility  of  England  who  held  lands  in  both 
countries  only  a  half-English  nobility.  Henry  I.  during 
the  thirty-six  years  of  his  reign  had  spent  but  five  sum- 
mers in  England.  Henry  II.  spent  a  great  part  of  his 


120  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

time  on  the  continent,  and  wasted  much,  perhaps  most, 
of  his  activity  there.  He  understood  but  could  not  speak 
English.  Richard  had  passed  in  Norman  war  the  years 
left  after  his  release  from  captivity,  and  the  monument 
of  his  reign  was  the  Chateau  Gaillard.  The  severance 
was  essential  to  the  completion  of  English  nationality. 
Henceforth  the  king  of  England  is  English,  the  nobility 
is  English.  The  political  lists  are  closed,  and  the  tyranny 
of  John  challenges  a  national  resistance.  Conscious 
nationality  may  be  said  to  date  from  this  hour. 

In  fact,  the  first  opposition  which  John  encountered 
was  from  the  unwillingness  of  his  barons  to  follow  him 
in  arms  to  a  land  in  which  they  had  no  longer  an  interest. 
But  the  monarchy  was  strong;  John  had  a  standing  army 
of  mercenaries ;  and  while  he  could  wring  money  to  pay 
them  from  his  people  or  from  the  Jews,  though  his  cruelty 
and  lust  made  him  deadly  enemies,  particularly  among  the 
noble  families  on  whose  honour  he  trampled,  his  tyranny 
at  home  was  secure.  It  is  hard  to  say  what  might  have 
happened  had  not  John,  like  his  father,  but  under  a  still 
more  adverse  star,  come  into  collision  with  the  church, 
which  here  did  in  truth  by  its  counter-tyranny  put  a 
salutary  limit  to  the  tyranny  of  a  king. 

The  archbishopric  of  Canterbury  was  vacant  by  the 
death  of  Hubert,  in  whom  John  lost  his  best  counsellor, 
though  one  whom  he  feared  much  more  than  he  loved ; 
at  least,  when  Geoffrey  Fitzpeter,  who  had  always  re- 
strained him,  died,  he  said  that  the  justiciar  had  gone  to 
join  the  archbishop  in  hell.  The  justiciar,  it  is  observed, 
had  begun  to  exercise  something  like  the  influence  of  a 
prime  minister,  or,  rather,  like  that  of  the  justiciar  of 
Aragon,  whose  authority  was  a  check  upon  the  power  of 


vi  JOHN  121 

the  king.  Two  applicants  for  the  pallium  presented  them- 
selves at  Rome  ;  Reginald,  the  sub-prior  of  Canterbury, 
where  the  chapter  was  monastic,  clandestinely  elected  by 
the  younger  monks ;  and  John  De  Grey,  Bishop  of  Nor- 
wich, John's  favourite  minister,  afterwards  elected  by  the 
chapter  on  the  nomination  of  the  king.  The  pope  heard 
the  cause,  gave  each  suitor  a  shell,  and  took  the  appoint-  1206 
ment  himself.  He  made  the  representatives  of  the  chap- 
ter who  were  at  Rome  elect  a  friend,  and,  as  he  might 
hope,  a  creature  of  his  own,  Stephen  Langton,  an  English- 
man by  birth,  but  a  scholar  of  European  fame  and  a  star 
of  the  University  of  Paris.  John  refused  to  recognize 
the  appointment,  drove  the  monks  of  Canterbury  from 
their  house,  seized  their  estates,  and  set  the  pope  at  defi- 
ance. To  soothing  words  and  menacing  allusions  to 
Thomas  Becket  he  was  alike  deaf.  When  he  was 
threatened  with  an  interdict  he  swore  by  God's  teeth,  his 
favourite  and  appropriate  oath,  that  if  the  interdict  were 
published  he  would  seize  all  the  possessions  of  the  church, 
outlaw  all  the  clergy,  pack  them  out  of  his  realm,  and  if 
emissaries  came  from  Rome  would  send  them  back  with- 
out noses  and  eyes.  He  seems  to  have  been  a  practical 
free-thinker.  .There  were  stories  of  his  sending  three 
times  in  the  course  of  a  sermon  to  a  bishop  and  a  saint 
who  was  preaching  before  him  to  stop  because  he  wanted 
his  dinner;  of  his  covetously  fingering  the  offertory 
money;  and  of  his  letting  the  spear-sceptre  fall  at  his 
inauguration  by  the  archbishop  as  Duke  of  Normandy, 
while  he  was  jesting  with  his  boon  companions.  He 
refused  to  communicate  at  his  coronation,  and  was  re- 
proved by  St.  Hugh  for  refusing  to  communicate  at 
Easter.  It  could  even  be  believed  of  him  that  he  thought 


122  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

of  turning  Mahometan.  But  in  the  conflict  which'he  now 
challenged  the  stars  in  their  courses  fought  against  him. 
Thanks  to  the  general  growth  of  superstition,  to  the 
religious  ferment  of  the  crusades,  to  the  steadfastness  of 
papal  ambition,  to  the  continuity  of  papal  policy,  to  the 
efforts  of  a  European  priesthood  united  and  enthusiastic 
in  its  own  cause,  to  the  skilful  use  of  an  arsenal  of  sophis- 
try, forgery,  misquoted  Scripture,  and  fallacious  metaphor, 
combined  with  the  favour  of  the  people,  who  saw  in  the 
Vicar  of  Christ  a  power  above  that  of  their  immediate 
oppressors  and  did  not  see  the  court  of  Rome,  the  papacy, 
even  since  the  time  of  Henry  II.,  had  been  advancing 
with  great  strides.  The  successor  of  Peter  asserted  his 
claim  to  excommunicate  kings  and  to  release  their  sub- 
jects from  allegiance,  to  depose  them  and  to  set  up  others 
in  their  room;  to  call  kings  to  account  not  only  for 
offences  against  the  church,  but  for  offences  against  moral 
laws,  such  as  the  laws  of  marriage ;  himself  to  receive 
kingdoms  by  cession ;  to  grant  those  to  which  there  was 
no  heir,  the  succession  to  which  was  doubtful,  or  which 
had  been  won  from  infidels  or  heretics ;  to  dispose  of  all 
islands  as  Pope  Adrian  had  disposed  of  Ireland  ;  to  inter- 
fere in  imperial  and  royal  elections,  not  only  in  the  last, 
but  in  the  first  resort;  to  put  in  motion  the  armies  of 
crusading  Christendom  ;  to  command  kings  to  march  ;  to 
excommunicate  them  for  disobedience  to  the  command. 
Innocent  III.,  the  pope  by  whom  most  of  these  advances 
towards  supremacy  were  made,  and  against  whom  John 
had  now  pitted  himself,  was  about  the  most  formidable 
of  the  line.  Unlike  popes  in  general,  he  had  been  elected 
in  the  vigour  of  his  manhood.  He  was  a  man  of  com- 
manding genius  and  extraordinary  force  of  character. 


vi  JOHN  123 

With  the  fanatical  zeal  of  the   monk   he   combined  the 
address  of  the  politician,  and  never  was  earthly  conqueror 
more  ambitious,  more  unscrupulous,  or  more  ruthless  than 
this  Vicar  of  Christ.     For  a  moment  he  almost  realized 
the  ideal  of  Hildebrand  by  making  Europe  a  theocracy. 
His  resolute  policy  had  set  his  throne  on  firm  foundations 
in  Italy,  where   the  papacy,  being  most  seen,  was  least 
respected.     He  had  the  heir  to  the  kingdom  of  Sicily  for   1198 
his  ward.     He  interposed  as  supreme  judge  in   imperial 
elections ;    decided    in    favour    of    Otho    of    Brunswick,   1198 
against  the  Hohenstauffen,  Philip ;  brought  on  the  Em- 
pire ten  years  of  devastating  war;   and  afterwards  excom- 
municated Otho.      For  a  king's  breach  of  the  marriage   1210 
vow  he  laid  France  under  an  interdict,  and  humbled  her   1200 
astute  and  powerful  monarch  in  the  dust.      He  treated    1214 
in  the  same  way  the  princes  of  Castile  and  Leon.      For 
disloyal  dealings  with  the  infidel,  he  cursed  the  king  of 
Navarre  and  his  realm.     He   saw  the   crown  of  Aragon   1204 
laid  on  the  altar  of  St.  Peter.     He  forced  tribute  from 
Portugal.     From  Servia  to  Iceland  he  made  his  authority 
felt.      Only  by  the  shrewd   traders   of   Venice  was  his 
anger  braved  when  their  interests  were  concerned.    Aided 
by  the  passionate  eloquence  of  Fulk  De  Neuilly,  he  set  on   1198 
foot  a  new  crusade,  and  his  crusaders  having  taken  Con-   1204 
stantinople,  he  stretched  his  empire  over  the  seat  of  the 
Eastern  schism  and  was  pope  at  once  of  both  the  Romes. 
Arming  the  ambition  of  the  king  of  France  and  of  Simon   1208 
De  Montfort  in  the  cause  of  Peter,  he  exterminated  amid 
scenes   of  blood,  atrocity,  and   havoc,   to  which   history 
affords  few  parallels,  the  gay  and  prosperous  but  heretical 
population  of   Southern    France.     Under   his   pontificate 
were  founded  those  two  mighty  engines  of   the  papacy, 


124  THE  UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

1209,  the  orders  of  St.  Francis  and  St.  Dominic,  the  latter  the 
order  of  the  Inquisition,  devoted  to  the  enslavement  of 
the  mind.  Against  such  a  pope,  such  a  king  as  John  had 
little  chance  of  winning  the  game.  His  character  and 
his  estrangement  from  the  barons  made  him  a  tempting 
quarry  for  Innocent's  towering  ambition. 

1208  After  futile  parleyings  the  pope  launched  the  interdict. 
For  six  years  the  churches  of  England  were  closed ;  the 
services  ceased ;  the  bells  were  silent ;  the  images  of 
Christ  were  veiled  ;  the  relics  of  the  saints  were  with- 
drawn from  sight ;  no  sacraments  were  administered  sav- 
ing the  baptism  of  infants  and  the  extreme  unction  of  the 
dying.  The  dead  were  buried  in  unhallowed  ground. 
Marriages  were  performed  only  in  the  church  porch  ; 
sermons  were  preached  only  in  the  churchyard.  The 
sources,  deemed  indispensable,  of  spiritual  life  were  cut  off, 
and  to  compel  the  king  to  surrender  to  the  pope  there 
was  a  wholesale  and  promiscuous  slaughter  of  Christian 
souls.  Herein  the  pope,  as  a  spiritual  conqueror,  fol- 
lowed the  analogy  of  secular  war,  in  which  to  bring  the 
princes  to  terms  the  subjects  are  put  to  the  sword.  The 
bishops,  having  pronounced  the  interdict,  fled  the  realm, 
all  save  the  courtier  or  patriot  prelates  of  Norwich,  Win- 
chester, and  Durham.  Stephen  Langton  posted  himself 
at  Pontigny,  the  retreat  of  Becket,  to  whom  he  did  not  fail 
to  be  compared.  John  was  as  good  as  his  word.  He  met 
the  interdict  by  outlawing  the  clergy,  at  the  same  time 
holding  to  ransom,  no  doubt  with  impious  joy,  the  concu- 
bines whom  in  defiance  of  the  canons  many  of  them  kept. 
He  even  let  the  murderer  of  a  clerk  go  free,  though  to 
the  reign  of  violence  thus  opened  he  had  soon  to  put  a 
stop.  Raging  like  a  hunted  boar,  he  showed  his  Angevin 


vi  JOHN  125 

energy  and  fierceness.  He  compelled  all  the  tenants  of 
the  crown  to  renew  their  homage  ;  took  hostages  of 
barons  whom  he  suspected  ;  drove  others  to  France  or 
Scotland  and  seized  their  castles.  He  led  an  army  to  the 
border  of  Scotland  and  compelled  the  king  of  Scotland  1209 
to  give  sureties  for  keeping  the  peace.  His  mercenaries 
would  reck  little  of  the  interdict.  Nor  does  it  seem  to 
have  told  as  might  have  been  expected  on  the  people  at 
large.  It  was  not  universally  observed,  some  monasteries 
and  churches  pleading  exemptions.  But  an  age  supersti- 
tious enough  to  believe  in  curses  looks  for  visible  effects  of 
the  curse.  The  sun  continued  to  shine  on  England  ;  the 
seasons  held  their  course  ;  the  earth  yielded  her  fruits. 
From  those  whom  Rome  had  cursed  heaven  appeared  not 
to  withdraw  its  blessing.  Taxation  was  lightened  by  the 
seizure  of  church  property,  and  the  land  apparently  was 
doing  well. 

The  pope  now  warned  the  king  as  his  "  dear  son  "  that 
the  bow  was  fully  bent.  After  more  vain  parleying 
the  arrow  flew.  The  sentence  of  excommunication  went  1212 
forth  against  the  king.  To  publish  it  formally  in  Eng- 
land was  not  easy,  all  the  bishops  of  the  pope's  party 
being  in  exile.  But  rumour  spread  the  fearful  news. 
Geoffrey,  Archdeacon  of  Norwich,  whispered  it  to  his 
colleagues  in  the  exchequer,  and  was  requited  with  a 
cbpe  of  lead  over  his  head  and  shoulders,  in  which  he  was 
starved  to  death.  John  did  not  yield.  He  had  his  mer- 
cenaries with  breasts  curse-proof  ;  he  had  money  to  pay 
them  withal  from  the  spoils  of  the  church,  including  the 
wool-packs  of  the  Cistercians,  from  the  tallage  of  his 
towns,  from  the  coffers  of  the  Jews,  one  of  whom  he  forced 
to  disgorge  by  daily  pulling  out  one  of  his  grinder  teeth. 


126  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

His  trusty  De  Grey,  his  two  other  royalist  bishops,  were 
still  at  his  side  ;  his  barons  seem  not  to  have  shunned 
him  ;  his  captains,  soldiers  of  fortune,  were  faithful  to  his 
gold  ;  the  son  of  the  king  of  Scots  was  sent  to  receive 
knighthood,  a  half-religious  ordinance,  at  his  hand.  Nor 
was  he  without  a  publicist  on  his  side.  Alexander,  sur- 
named  the  Mason,  did  for  him  in  a  humble  way  \vhat  Peter 
De  Vineis  did  for  Frederick  II.,  arguing  that  the  pope 
had  no  right  to  meddle  with  civil  rights  or  estates,  God 
having  given  Peter  power  over  church  government  and 
church  estates  alone.  John  bestirred  himself  with  fiend- 

1210  ish  energy,  flew  to  Ireland,  there  crushed  the  dangerous 
house  of  Lacy,  captured  the  wife  and  child  of  his  enemy, 
William  de  Braose,  and  brought  them  to  Windsor,  where 
they  were  believed  to  have  been  starved  to  death.     Ireland 
he  put  under  his  faithful  De  Grey.     Apparently  he  saw, 
as  Strafford  and  James  II.  saw  long  after  him,  that   in 
Ireland   a  force   might  be  raised  for  the  suppression   of 

1211  English  resistance.     From  Ireland  he  flew  to  Wales,  the 
ever  restless,  and  dispersed  the  cloud  of  mischief  which 
was  gathering  on  those  hills.     He  forced  the  Welsh  chief- 
tains to  give  him  twenty-eight   hostages,  whom,  finding 
that  the  Welsh  were  again  being  stirred  up  against  him, 
he    hanged.      He    now    received    ominous   warnings   of 
treason   near   his   person.      From  Wales  he  flew  north- 
wards, then  he  hurried  to  London,  crushed  disaffection 
there,  and  forced  the  barons  whom  he  suspected  to  put 
their  children  into  his  hands.     In  the  north,  where  the 
spirit  of  the  barons  was  most  independent,  rebellion  broke 
out,  but  the  mercenaries  put  it  down. 

It  seemed  that  in  the  battle  between  brute  force  and 
superstition  brute  force  was  not  unlikely  to  win.     But 


vi  JOHN  127 

superstition  now,  as  usual,  called  brute  force  to  its  aid. 
The  pope  absolved  John's  subjects  from  their  allegiance, 
deposed  him,  and  gave  his  kingdom  to  his  enemy,  Philip 
of  France.  Philip's  rapacity  had  already  served  Innocent 
in  the  extermination  of  the  Albigenses.  It  answered  with 
alacrity  to  this  new  call.  He  raised  an  army  for  the  inva-  1212 
sion  of  England,  and  by  his  sword  the  pope  was  on  the 
point  of  slaughtering  the  bodies  of  John's  subjects,  as  by 
the  interdict  he  had  slaughtered  their  souls.  John  mus- 
tered the  forces  of  his  kingdom  on  Barham  Down,  but  he  1213 
could  rely  on  none  save  the  mercenaries  and  the  auxiliaries 
whom  De  Grey  had  brought  from  Ireland.  He  felt  that 
all  men  were  against  him  and  were  looking  for  his  fall. 
The  prophecy  of  a  certain  Peter  Hermit  that  he  would  no 
longer  be  king  on  Ascension  day  had  taken  hold  of  the 
mind  of  the  people  and  of  his  own.  Pandulph,  the  pope's 
legate,  a  wily  Italian,  slipped  over  to  scare  him  with  pict- 
ures of  the  French  force.  At  last  his  heart  failed  him. 
He  gave  way,  and  as  his  resistance  had  been  sustained  1213 
not  by  principle,  but  by  savage  pride,  he  not  only  bent 
but  broke.  He  consented  to  admit  Langton  as  archbishop. 
He  engaged  to  restore  all  exiles,  release  all  prisoners,  re- 
scind all  outlawries  against  clergymen,  make  full  ristitu- 
tion  of  all  church  property,  and  reimburse  those  whom  he 
had  despoiled.  He  did  more,  and  much  worse.  By  a 
formal  instrument  placed  in  the  hands  of  Pandulph,  he 
surrendered  his  kingdom  to  the  pope,  and  received  it 
back  as  a  fief  of  the  Holy  See,  undertaking  to  pay  for  it 
in  token  of  vassalage  the  annual  sum  of  a  thousand  marks, 
of  which  three  hundred  were  for  Ireland.  He  was  then 
released  from  excommunication  by  Stephen  Langton,  at 
whose  feet  and  those  of  the  bishops  he  grovelled  in  tears. 


128  THE  UNITED  KINGDOM  CHAP. 

But  the  interdict  and  the  destruction  of  souls  which  it 
entailed  were  allowed  to  continue  for  nearly  a  year,  when 
John,  having  satisfied  the  pope  on  the  question  of  com- 
1213  pensation,  the  bells  rang  out  again  and  the  services  of  the 
church  were  performed  once  more.  Papal  and  ecclesiasti- 
cal pretensions  had  reached  their  high-water  mark  in  Eng- 
land. From  this  time  the  tide  is  falling,  though  the 
waves  may  again  beat  high. 

With  the  pope  John's  peace  was  ignominiously  made. 
His  peace  was  not  made  with  his  subjects,  who,  besides 
the  public  grievances,  arbitrary  taxation,  abuse  of  the 
feudal  rights  and  perquisites  of  the  crown,  sale  and  denial 
of  justice,  the  violence  and  licence  of '  the  mercenary 
troops,  the  employment  of  foreign  brigands  in  high  places, 
violations  of  the  liberties  of  London  and  other  towns,  and 
oppressive  administration  of  the  forest  laws,  which  John 
aggravated  by  preserving  feathered  game,  had  private 
wrongs  to  avenge ;  the  ruin  of  their  estates,  the  banish- 
ment of  their  kindred,  the  pollution  of  their  homes  by  the 
king's  lust.  Even  the  clergy,  complaining  that  through 
the  partial  management  of  the  pope's  legate  they  had  been 
docked  of  their  indemnity,  were  still  malcontent.  There 
ensued  a  great  political  movement,  in  which  the  strength 
of  the  Angevin  monarchy,  with  its  army  of  mercenaries, 
and  the  decline  of  the  feudal  militia,  compelled  the 
nobility  to  enlist  the  people.  Had  the  monarchy  been 
weak,  privilege  would  have  needed  no  ally.  The 
soul  of  the  movement  was  the  free-spirited  baronage  of 
the  north.  As  its  consecrator  and  guide  came  forward 
Stephen  Langton,  in  choosing  whom  as  archbishop  the 
pope  had  chosen  much  better  than  he  knew.  Stephen, 
though  a  churchman,  was  an  Englishman.  He  had  shown 


vi  JOHN  129 

his  regard  for  liberty  and  right  by  binding  the  king  at  his 
absolution  to  keep  the  good  laws  of  Edward  the  Confes- 
sor. He  now  began  to  play  a  part  as  unexpected  as  it 
was  memorable. 

Philip  of  France  had  spent  much  money  in  armaments, 
and  his  cupidity  had  been  excited.  When,  the  reconcilia- 
tion of  the  king  with  the  pope  having  taken  place,  it  was 
notified  to  him  by  Innocent  that  the  crusade  was  at  an 
end,  he  cursed  the  deceitfulness  of  Rome  and  proposed  to 
his  council  to  sail  for  England,  the  pope's  prohibition  not- 
withstanding. But  he  was  thwarted  in  the  council  by 
Ferrand,  Count  of  Flanders,  who  at  heart  was  an  ally  of 
England.  He  then  turned  from  England  upon  Flanders,  1213 
took  Ypres,  and  was  laying  siege  to  Ghent  when  the  Eng- 
lish fleet,  which  had  been  collected  to  meet  the  invasion, 
sailed  to  the  Flemish  coast  under  William  Longsword, 
Earl  of  Salisbury,  the  bastard  brother  of  John,  and  capt- 
ured the  greater  part  of  the  French  fleet,  laden  with  sup- 
plies for  the  campaign.  John's  spirit  rose,  and  he  once 
more  showed  himself  not  incapable  of  vigorous  action. 
He  passed  with  an  army  into  France,  for  a  moment  recon-  1214 
quered  Poitou,  and  by  a  grand  stroke  of  diplomacy 
formed  a  league  with  the  Emperor,  the  Count  of  Flanders, 
and  other  princes  of  Germany  and  the  Low  Countries, 
which  brought  the  French  monarchy  to  fight  for  its  life  1214 
on  the  field  of  Bouvines,  and,  had  the  day  there  gone  in 
favour  of  the  league,  might  have  altered  the  course  of 
European  history.  At  Bouvines,  however,  the  star  of 
France  prevailed,  and  John  returned  from  abroad  weak- 
ened by  defeat  to  encounter  rebellion  at  home. 

The  immediate  issue  was  foreign  service.     In  the  last 
reign   this   issue   had   been    raised   with   success  by  the 


130  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

saintly  Hugh,  Bishop  of  Lincoln,  in  whom  Richard,  had 
he  lived,  might  have  encountered  a  second  Becket.  The 
barons  had  refused  to  follow  the  king  to  France,  pleading 
that  they  had  served  their  forty  days  at  the  rendezvous 
on  Barham  Down.  The  king  was  proceeding  to  take 
summary  vengeance  on  them  when  his  path  was  crossed 
by  the  archbishop,  who  warned  him  that  it  was  the  right 
of  the  accused  to  be  tried  by  their  peers.  Meetings  were 
held  to  concert  measures  for  the  defence  of  liberty  and 
right.  At  one  of  these  Stephen  Langton  produced  a  copy 
of  the  charter  of  Henry  I.  The  barons  accepted  it  with 
acclamation.  Assembling  under  colour  of  a  pilgrimage 

1214  at  St.  Edmundsbury  they  were  sworn  severally,  at  the 
high  altar  to  withdraw  their  allegiance  to  the  king  if  lie 
should  refuse  to  acknowledge  their  chartered  rights.     On 
his  return  they  presented  themselves  before  him  in  arms, 
and  demanded  the  laws  of  Edward  the  Confessor  and  the 
charter  of  Henry  I.,  thus  combining  the  claims  of  both 
races  and  all  interests.     John  saw  his  danger.     He  had 
lost  the  support  of  the  legate,  whom  the  pope  had  re- 
called, and  he  had  been  bereft  of  the  .  aid  of  his  ablest 
counsellor  by  the  death  of  John  De  Grey.     He  tempo- 
rized,   sent   for    more   foreign    troops,    strengthened   his 
castles,  and  tried,  though  in  vain,  to  detach  the  clergy 
from  the  common  cause  by  granting  them  a  charter  of 

1215  free  elections  to  bishoprics  and  abbacies.      He  also  tried 
in  vain  to  enforce  a  general  renewal  of  the  oath  of  fealty 
with  an  abjuration  of  the  liberties  now  demanded.     At 
the  same  time  he  took  hold  of  the  skirts  of  the  church  by 
enrolling   himself    among   the    crusaders.      Both   parties 
applied  to  the  pope.     It  is  often  said  that  the  papacy,  in 
the  middle  ages,   was  the  friend  of  public  liberty.     It 


vi  JOHN  131 

might  balance  other  tyrannies,  but  it  has  always  been,  in 
its  affinities  and  sympathies,  as  well  as  in  its  own  char- 
acter, despotic.  When  did  a  pope  rebuke  the  misrule  of 
a  king,  or  excommunicate  and  depose  an  oppressor  who 
\\as  not  an  enemy  of  the  papacy?  Innocent  intended 
that  the  power  in  Christendom  should  be  held  under 
himself  by  the  kings.  Having  reduced  the  tyrant  to 
vassalage  he  now  upheld  the  tyranny.  He  enjoined  the 
archbishop,  at  whom  he  glanced  as  the  promoter  of  the 
disturbances,  to  put  them  down,  annulled  all  leagues, 
and  forbade  them  to  be  formed  in  future  under  pain  of 
excommunication.  The  barons,  advancing  with  a  large 
force  to  Brackley  in  Northamptonshire,  again  presented 
their  demands  to  the  king,  who  lay  at  Oxford.  The 
king,  having  garrisoned  his  castles,  and  being  assured 
of  the  pope's  support,  told  them  that  they  might  as  well 
demand  his  crown,  and  that  he  would  never  grant  them 
liberties  which  would  make  him  a  slave.  A  slave  the 
Angevin  monarch  deemed  himself  if  a  limit  were  put  to 
his  power.  Pandulph,  the  pope's  legate,  called  on  the 
archbishop  to  excommunicate  the  conspirators.  But 
Langton  declined,  saying  that  he  knew  the  pope's  in- 
tentions better,  and  threatened  to  excommunicate  the 
foreign  soldiery  if  they  were  not  sent  out  of  the  kingdom. 
Civil  war  then  broke  out.  The  army  of  the  barons, 
which  styled  itself  the  Army  of  God  and  Holy  Church, 
took  the  field  under  the  command  of  Fitzwalter.  This 
was  no  mutiny  of  the  feudatories  against  the  crown  as 
a  power  of  order.  The  aristocracy,  which  formed  the 
Army  of  God  and  Holy  Church,  was  an  aristocracy  of 
after-growth,  having  its  chief  seat  in  the  north,  English 
and  patriotic,  whatever  language  it  might  speak.  With 


132  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

it  were  combined  representatives  of  the  great  ministerial 
houses.  It  rose  not  against  order,  but  against  lawless 
tyranny.  The  English  people  who  had  been  for  Rufus, 
for  Henry  I.,  for  Henry  II.,  against  the  feudatories  of 
the  conquest,  were  with  the  new  nobility  against  the 
king.  London  was  heartily  on  the  same  side.  On  the 
king's  side  at  last  were  only  a  few  satellites  of  his 
tyranny  and  the  captains  of  his  mercenary  bands.  One 
or  two  nobles  of  the  better  stamp,  such  as  William  Mar- 
shall, Earl  of  Pembroke,  remained  with  him,  hoping  to 
guide  him  right,  and  probably  dreading  the  confusion 
which  would  ensue  if  the  monarchy  were  overthrown. 
Langton,  the  paragon  of  ecclesiastical  statesmen,  pre- 
served the  attitude  of  a  mediator,  while  he  was  the  soul 
of  the  patriot  cause.  The  younger  barons,  as  was  natu- 
ral, were  foremost  in  the  fray. 

The  patriot  army  appeared  before  Northampton,  which, 
London  being  disaffected,  was  John's  chief  seat  of  govern- 
ment and  the  depository  of  his  treasure.  But  the  foreign 
garrisons  were  staunch  and  the  place  was  too  strong  to  be 
taken  without  a  siege.  Bedford  opened  its  gates,  and 
now  an  invitation  arrived  from  the  patriot  party  in  Lon- 
don. A  detachment  at  once  hastened  thither.  The 
gates  were  opened  while  the  citizens  were  at  early  Mass 
and  the  city  was  occupied  without  resistance.  The  pa- 
triots are  accused  of  having  held  a  reign  of  terror,  arrested 
the  partisans  of  the  king,  and  seized  their  goods.  His 
capital  lost,  and  rebellion,  after  the  fall  of  London,  boldly 
rearing  its  crest  on  all  sides  of  him,  the  king  was  fain  to 
treat. 

He  was  at  Windsor.  There  he  met  the  barons.  On  a 
broad  meadow  beside  the  Thames,  between  Windsor  and 


vi  JOHN  133 

Staines,  famed  in  political  history  under  the  name  of 
Runnymede,  two  camps  were  pitched.  In  one  were  the 
king,  Pandulph  the  papal  legate,  representing  the  pope 
as  suzerain,  John's  ministers,  the  few  barons  who  adhered 
to  him,  and  his  mercenary  captains.  In  the  other  was  the 
Army  of  God  and  Holy  Church.  Under  the  mediation  of 
Langton  and  William  Marshall  a  conference  was  held. 
The  issue  was  a  charter  ostensibly  of  grace,  really  of  1215 
capitulation,  granted  by  the  king  and  witnessed  by  the 
chief  men,  lay  and  clerical,  of  the  realm. 

This  is  that  Great  Charter  which,  again  and  again 
renewed,  was  invoked  by  succeeding  generations  as  the 
palladium  of  national  right.  Of  it  the  other  great  docu- 
ments in  the  archives  of  English  liberty,  the  Renunciation 
of  Tallage,  the  Petition  of  Right,  the  Habeas  Corpus,  and 
the  Bill  of  Right,  are  complements  or  reassertions.  Its 
name  is  sacred  in  all  lands  to  which  British  institutions 
have  spread,  it  served  as  the  watchword  of  patriotism  in 
the  American  revolution,  as  well  as  in  the  struggles  against 
the  tyranny  of  Plantagenets  or  Stuarts,  and  was  invoked 
in  1865,  for  the  protection  of  the  black  peasantry  in  the 
British  dependency  of  Jamaica.  It  is  only  now  begin- 
ning, in  common  with  all  charters  and  all  ancestral  or  tra- 
ditional safeguards,  to  give  place  to  political  science  as 
the  morning  star  gives  place  to  day. 

The  earliest  constitution,  this  Charter  has  been  called. 
That  designation  it  can  hardly  claim.  It  is  too  unmethodi- 
cal, too  miscellaneous,  and  its  great  political  articles  were 
dropped  in  subsequent  editions.  Some  of  its  articles  are 
personal,  such  as  that  requiring  the  dismissal  of  John's 
mercenary  captains  by  name,  and  the  expulsion  of  their 
bands.  Some  are  occasional,  such  as  that  providing  for 


134  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

the  restitution  of  the  king's  robberies.  Its  framers  cer- 
tainly had  no  object  in  view  beyond  the  correction  of 
abuses,  though  in  correcting  the  abuse  they  affirmed  the 
right. 

The  American  Declaration  of  Independence,  the  French 
Declaration  of  the  Rights  of  Man,  proclaim  abstract  princi- 
ples. The  Great  Charter  proclaims  no  abstract  principles. 
It  simply  redresses  wrongs.  But  the  wrongs  are  substan- 
tially those  of  bad  government  in  general,  and  the  princi- 
ples of  redress  are  fundamental. 

The  piety  of  the  Army  of  God  gives  the  first  place  to 
the  church,  which  is  assured  of  all  its  rights  and  liberties, 
including  freedom  of  election  to  bishoprics  and  abbacies ; 
a  freedom  which,  however,  it  was  destined  never  to  enjoy, 
and  which  it  could  not  have  enjoyed  with  the  pope  for  its 
head  and  in  conjunction  with  the  vast  endowments  and 
privileges  of  an  establishment,  without  creating  within 
the  realm  a  power  external  and  most  dangerous  to  the 
state. 

The  charter  proceeds  to  deal  with  the  abuses  of  the 
feudal  system,  or,  to  speak  more  properly,  of  the  system 
of  tenures ;  such  as  the  exaction  of  arbitrary  sums  by  way 
of  reliefs  on  the  demise  of  the  fief,  and  of  unreasonable 
amounts  for  the  three  lawful  aids,  those  of  knighting  the 
lord,  marrying  his  eldest  daughter,  and  ransoming  him 
from  captivity ;  the  levying  of  excessive  fines  for  breach 
of  feudal  obligation ;  waste  of  the  estates  of  wards ;  the 
sale  of  minor  heirs,  or  of  heiresses,  in  marriages  of  dis- 
paragement ;  the  practice  of  forcing  dowagers  to  marry 
any  man  of  the  lord's  choice. 

Of  more  permanent  importance  are  the  articles  which 
secure  to  London  and  all  the  other  cities  and  ports,  now 


vi  JOHN  135 

lifting  their  heads  above  feudalism,  the  enjoyment  of 
their  ancient  liberties  and  customs  by  land  and  water; 
ordain  the  uniformity  of  weights  and  measures,  vital  to 
trade ;  and  permit  foreign  merchants  to  come  into  England, 
dwell  in  it,  travel  over  it,  and  depart  from  it  free  from 
royal  extortion,  while,  should  war  break  out  between  their 
country  and  England,  they  are  to  be  attached  without 
hurt  to  their  persons  or  goods.  The  king  had  no  doubt 
fleeced  the  foreign  merchants;  in  merely  discouraging 
them  he  would  have  had  popular  jealousy  on  his  side. 

London  is  treated  on  the  footing  of  the  tenants-in- 
chief  and  exempted  from  any  scutage  or  aid  not  imposed 
by  the  national  council,  besides  being  assured  of  all  her 
municipal  privileges  and  liberties.  Other  cities  and 
boroughs,  towns  and  ports  are  secured  in  their  ancient 
customs  and  liberties,  saving  which,  and  the  special  char- 
ters which  some  of  them  had  obtained,  they  would  be  left 
under  the  dominion  of  their  lords,  and  subject  to  tallage, 
though,  as  we  have  seen,  they  were  in  the  course  of  eman- 
cipation. 

No  clauses  would  be  more  welcome  than  those  which 
limit  the  hateful  domain  of  forest  law,  disafforest  the  enclos- 
ures of  John's  reign,  and  ordain  that  an  inquest  shall  be 
held  on  forest  usage  by  twelve  sworn  knights  in  each  dis- 
trict. Such  a  reform  would  be  doubly  blest,  since  it  would 
partly  extinguish  the  source,  not  only  of  oppression,  but 
of  the  lawlessness  which  oppression  provoked,  and  which, 
as  the  Robin  Hood  ballads,  though  of  later  date,  show, 
commended  itself  as  irregular  heroism  to  the  heart  of  the 
people. 

The  main  political  clauses  are  those  which  provide  for 
the  calling  of  the  national  council  and  forbid  scutages  or 


136  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

aids,  that  is  any  feudal  impost  save  the  regular  aids,  to 
be  levied  without  its  consent.  The  national  council, 
besides  the  heads  of  the  church,  archbishops,  bishops,  and 
mitred  abbots,  comprised  the  orders  of  the  greater  and 
the  lesser  barons.  The  greater  barons  were  the  principal 
tenants-in-chief  of  the  crown,  holders  of  large  fiefs,  who 
led  their  own  retainers  to  the  field.  The  lesser  barons 
were  the  smaller  landowners,  who  were  called  to  mili- 
tary service  by  the  sheriff.  The  great  barons  were  to  be 
summoned  personally  to  the  council  by  royal  writ,  as 
the  members  of  the  House  of  Lords  are  summoned  now. 
The  lesser  barons  were  to  be  summoned  collectively 
through  the  sheriff.  Forms,  which  we  may  now  call 
parliamentary,  were  to  be  observed.  It  is  provided  that 
the  summons  shall  be  issued  forty  days  beforehand,  that 
it  shall  specify  the  time,  the  place,  the  subjects  of  delib- 
eration, and  that  members  absent  after  due  notice  shall  be 
bound  by  the  determination  of  those  present;  an  enact- 
ment necessary  in  a  time  when  the  representative  system 
was  in  its  infancy,  and  when  the  notion,  embodied  in  the 
Polish  Liberum  Veto,  might  still  linger,  that  a  freeman 
could  be  bound  only  by  his  individual  consent.  This 
assembly  was  not  a  parliament;  none  sat  in  it  but  the 
tenants-in-chief.  Yet  it  distinctly  marks  the  ground  on 
which  parliament  was  to  be  built.  The  clauses  relating 
to  the  national  council  were  afterwards  dropped,  proba- 
bly because  the  party  which  framed  the  Charter  had  come 
into  power  and  did  not  wish  to  tie  its  own  hands.  Yet  the 
principles  lived  and  prevailed. 

With  the  clauses  prohibiting  arbitrary  taxation  may  be 
coupled  that  restraining  the  royal  right  of  purveyance, 
which  amounted  to  arbitrary  taxation  in  kind,  and  enact- 


vi  JOHN  137 

ing  that  for  all  things  taken  by  the  king's  officers  for  his 
use  due  payment  shall  be  made.  Under  the  same  head 
may  be  placed  the  clauses  forbidding  the  oppressive  exac- 
tion of  debts  due  to  the  Jews,  those  hated  and  hapless 
instruments  of  royal  extortion. 

Of  all  the  articles  the  most  famous,  and  perhaps  the 
most  important,  are  those  which  secure  personal  liberty, 
open  trial  by  peers  and  unbought  justice;  "No  freeman 
shall  be  arrested,  imprisoned,  dispossessed,  outlawed,  ban- 
ished, or  hurt  in  his  person  or  his  property,  nor  will  we  in 
person  or  through  our  officers  lay  hands  upon  him  save 
by  the  lawful  judgment  of  his  peers,  or  the  law  of  the 
land."  "We  will  to  no  one  sell,  deny,  or  delay  right  or 
justice."  The  first  clause  affirms  the  right  of  trial  by  jury. 
These  principles  England,  though  her  government  was  not 
always  true  to  them  in  practice,  steadfastly  cherished,  while 
arbitrary  tribunals,  arbitrary  imprisonments,  arbitrary  pun- 
ishments were  the  general  rule  in  Europe.  An  almost 
necessary  adjunct  of  open  trial  by  peers,  as  has  been 
already  said,  was  the  renunciation,  so  far  as  law  prevailed, 
of  judicial  torture.  For  the  assurance  of  justice  there  are 
a  number  of  subsidiary  provisions.  The  court  of  common 
pleas  for  suits  between  subject  and  subject  is  not  to  follow 
the  king  in  his  progress  through  the  realm,  but  to  be  held 
in  a  fixed  place  for  the  convenience  of  suitors.  Cases  of 
inheritance  or  presentation  to  benefices  are  to  be  tried 
within  the  county,  and  two  justices  are  to  be  sent  into 
each  county  four  times  a  year  to  hold  the  trials,  with  four 
knights  of  the  county  chosen  for  the  purpose.  This  puts 
the  institution  of  itinerant  justices  on  the  footing  of  law. 
Fines  are  to  be  proportioned  to  the  offence. 

A  great  advance  in  judicature  is  made  by  forbidding 


138  THE   UNITED  KINGDOM  CHAP. 

sheriffs,  coroners  of  the  king,  or  constables  of  castles, 
with  their  private  dungeons,  to  hold  pleas  of  the  crown, 
that  is,  to  try  serious  crimes,  which  are  thereby  made 
over  to  the  judges  of  the  land.  Against  arbitrary  im- 
prisonment special  security  is  provided  by  the  enactment 
that  the  writ  of  inquest  of  life  or  limb  should  be  given 
without  price  and  never  denied,  the  writ  being  a  precursor 
of  that  of  Habeas  Corpus.  Only  to  freemen  these  securi- 
ties are  given.  As  yet  the  villain  was  not  free,  but  by 
fixity  of  tenure  he  was  entering  on  the  road  to  freedom. 

Personal  liberty,  again,  was  enlarged  by  the  clause 
permitting  any  one  to  leave  the  kingdom  and  return  at 
will  unless  in  case  of  war,  when  he  may  be  restrained  for 
some  short  space,  and  for  the  good  of  the  kingdom.  The 
only  exceptions  are  prisoners,  outlaws,  and  alien  enemies. 
It  may  be  surmised  that  an  ecclesiastical  hand  was  here 
at  work  removing  a  legal  barrier  against  the  resort  for 
judgment  to  Rome. 

What  the  king  grants  to  his  tenants-in-chief  they  are 
bound  to  grant  to  their  under-tenants.  Nor  does  the 
Charter  stop  at  these,  or  at  the  burghers  and  the  mer- 
chants. It  does  something  even  for  the  villain,  including 
him  in  the  provisions  against  excessive  fines,  and  provid- 
ing that  his  instruments  of  husbandry  shall  in  all  cases 
be  spared.  This  broad  national  character  of  the  Charter 
and  the  extension  of  its  benefits  to  all  interests,  even  to 
those  of  the  lowest  class,  may  fairly  be  ascribed  to  the 
influence  of  Archbishop  Langton,  a  man  of  high  intelli- 
gence and  the  head  of  an  order  both  better  educated  than 
the  barons  and  more  in  sympathy  with  the  people,  from 
whose  rank  many  of  its  members  and  of  its  chiefs  were 
drawn. 


vi  JOHN  139 

The  clauses  providing  for  restitution  to  the  Welsh,  and 
for  restoration  of  hostages  and  assurances  of  liberties  and 
rights  to  the  king  of  Scots,  show  that  the  barons  had  been 
fain  to  seek  aid  in  those  sinister  quarters  where  English  re- 
bellion was  always  sure  to  find  support.  They  might  have 
pleaded  that  foreign  mercenaries  formed  the  army  of  the 
tyrant.  The  clause  in  favour  of  the  king  of  Scots  might 
be  quoted  as  implying  a  connection  on  his  part  to  the 
English  monarchy  which  his  own  attitude  towards  John 
seems  to  suggest. 

How  was  the  Charter  to  be  upheld  ?  How  was  the 
king,  if  he  disregarded  it,  to  be  coerced  ?  In  these  days 
it  would  be  done  by  cutting  off  the  supplies.  In  those 
days  it  could  be  done  only  by  authorized  force.  Twenty- 
five  barons  were  appointed  conservators  of  the  Charter, 
and  the  king  was  made  to  authorize  them  together  with 
the  whole  country  (communa  totius  terrce),  in  case  of  his 
default  and  contumacy,  to  resort  to  force,  take  his  castles, 
and  make  war  upon  him,  saving  only  his  own  person  and 
those  of  his  queen  and  children,  till  he  did  right,  when 
they  were  to  return  to  their  allegiance.  The  pregnant 
phrase  communa  totius  terrce  denotes  the  thoroughly 
national  character  of  the  movement,  proclaims  the  con- 
scious unity  of  the  nation,  and  shows  that  race  had  finally 
given  way  to  country,  and  that  the  barons,  once  foreign 
conquerors  and  oppressors,  could  now  act  as  leaders  of 
the  whole  people.  The  great  Charter  was  published 
through  the  whole  realm  and  all  freemen  were  sworn  to 
its  observance. 

When  the  conference  broke  up,  John,  half  deposed 
by  the  establishment  of  the  conservators,  was  left  almost 
alone.  Outwardly  he  was  fair-spoken  and  compliant, 


140  THE   UNITED    KINGDOM 

though  he  cunningly  delayed  the  restitution  of  castles 
and  estates;  inwardly  he  cursed  his  day  and  brooded  over 
plans  of  counter-revolution  and  revenge.  His  intentions 
pierced  through  the  disguise  of  his  professions,  and  the 
barons  thought  it  wise  to  transfer  a  tournament  which, 
with  the  light  spirit  characteristic,  even  in  serious  action, 
of  a  nation's  youth,  they  had  proclaimed  in  honour  of 
their  success,  from  Stamford  to  the  neighbourhood  of  the 
capital,  and  to  throw  a  strong  garrison  under  William 
D'Albini  into  Rochester  Castle,  which  commanded  the 
approach  to  London  on  the  south.  Their  suspicions  were 
well  founded.  John,  as  the  chronicler  says,  had  resolved 
to  smite  his  enemies  at  once  with  the  spiritual  and  with 
the  temporal  sword.  He  had  sent  to  Rome  for  papal 
support,  to  France  and  Flanders  for  mercenary  bands. 

The  spiritual  sword  was  drawn  at  once  by  the  pope, 
who  condemned  the  Charter  as  an  ungrateful  outrage 
alike  upon  the  king  and  upon  the  sovereign  rights  of  the 
1216  Holy  See,  annulled  it,  and  forbade  its  observance  under 
penalty  of  excommunication.  Soon,  to  wield  the  temporal 
sword,  bodies  of  mercenaries  arrived  from  France  and  the 
Low  Countries  under  Savary  De  Mauleon,  Walter  Buck, 
and  other  soldiers  of  fortune.  Another  horde,  who  were 
coming  under  Hugh  De  Boves,  a  leader  noted  for  ferocity, 
with  their  wives  and  children,  to  take  possession  of  the 
land,  were  wrecked,  and  their  bodies  were  cast,  to  the  joy 
of  the  people,  on  the  coast.  The  king,  now  at  the  head  of 
the  army,  laid  siege  to  Rochester.  The  barons,  who  lay  in 
London,  made  but  a  faint  attempt  to  relieve  the  place,  not 
so  much,  probably,  because,  as  the  chroniclers  fancy,  they 
were  bewitched  by  the  pleasures  of  the  capital,  as  be- 
cause they  dared  not  with  their  insurrectionary  levies 


vi  JOHN  141 

face  better  trained  troops  under  experienced  leaders  in 
the  field.  Even  in  that  age,  when  all  freemen  were 
more  or  less  soldiers,  raw  levies  could  not  stand  against 
discipline  and  professional  skill.  After  a  gallant  defence 
William  D'Albini  and  his  garrison  surrendered  ;  and  John  1216 
would  have  hanged  them  all,  but  for  the  intercession  of 
Savary  De  Mauleon,  whose  trade  was  war,  and  who  might 
not  wish  that  his  trade  should  be  made  too  dangerous. 
The  king  now  divided  his  forces  into  two  bodies.  One, 
under  Salisbury,  watched  London,  and  swept  the  rich 
eastern  counties ;  the  other,  under  the  king  himself, 
marched  through  the  midland  and  northern  counties  into 
Scotland,  the  king  of  which,  Alexander  II.,  had  taken 
part  with  the  barons,  and  had  received  the  three  northern 
counties  as  the  price  of  his  aid.  Wherever  the  mercenary 
bands  appeared,  through  part  of  England  and  the  Low- 
lands of  Scotland,  havoc  was  let  loose ;  castles,  towns,  and 
hamlets  were  given  to  the  flames ;  the  people,  without 
distinction  of  profession,  age,  or  sex,  were  hunted  down 
and  tortured  for  their  ransom  ;  the  devastation  and 
horrors  of  the  anarchy  in  the  reign  of  Stephen  were  re- 
newed. The  barons  held  London,  the  strength  of  which 
set  the  freebooters  at  defiance ;  but  they  could  make  no 
stand  against  the  desolating  torrent  of  invasion  which 
swept  the  open  field.  The  pope  meanwhile  was  holding  1215 
a  great  council,  at  which  he  appeared  in  the  glory  of  his 
universal  dominion  over  East  and  West,  and  the  chief 
object  of  which  was  to  set  forward  a  crusade,  for  which 
he  reckoned  on  the  resources  of  his  rich  English  fief. 
He  had  already  excommunicated  the  rebels  generally  ;  he 
now  excommunicated  by  name  the  leading  barons,  the 
citizens  of  London,  and  Master  Gervase  Hobrigge,  a 


142  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

prominent  ecclesiastic,  the  leader,  it  seems,  of  the  patriot 
party  among  the  citizens.  The  city  was  laid  under  an 
interdict ;  but  the  interdict  was  disregarded  and  the  ser- 
vices were  performed  by  the  city  clergy  as  before,  proof 
that  the  spiritual  sword  wielded  for  the  objects  of  a  tem- 
poral policy  was  beginning  to  lose  its  edge  in  commercial 
London  as  it  did  in  commercial  Venice.  Stephen  Lang- 
ton,  finding  himself  powerless  to  avert  civil  war,  had  left 
the  kingdom.  John  would  have  detained  him.  But 
Pandulph  solved  the  difficulty  by  suspending  him  for  his 
refusal  to  excommunicate  the  patriots.  He  presented 
himself,  nevertheless,  at  Rome  among  the  other  prelates 
of  Christendom ;  but  Innocent  sat  in  judgment  with  the 
cardinals  upon  the  old  friend  and  fellow-student  who  had 
so  grievously  disappointed  his  hopes,  confirmed  the  sen- 
1215  tence  of  suspension,  and  detained  the  suspended  arch- 
bishop at  Rome.  He  also  set  aside  the  election  of  Simon 
Langton,  the  brother  of  Stephen,  who  had  been  elected  to 
the  archbishopric  of  York,  and  forced  the  chapter  to  elect 
in  his  room  Walter  De  Grey,  Bishop  of  Worcester,  the 
nephew  of  the  late  Bishop  of  Norwich,  who,  having  before 
paid  the  king  a  heavy  sum  to  be  made  chancellor,  now 
paid  the  pope  a  heavier  to  be  made  archbishop. 

The  barons  in  despair  turned  their  eyes  to  France,  as 
at  a  later  day  British  patriots,  despairing  of  resistance  to 
the  Stuart  tyrant  and  his  troops,  turned  their  eyes  to 
Holland.  Philip  Augustus  had  not  failed  to  mark  the 
opening  presented  to  his  ambition  by  the  course  of  affairs 
in  England.  His  movements  from  the  first  had  given 
ground  for  uneasiness  to  John,  at  whose  prayer  the  pope 
had  solemnly  warned  Philip  against  abetting  the  rebel 
cause.  Philip,  taught  by  bitter  experience,  cowered 


vi  JOHN  143 

before  the  papal  wrath.  But  when  the  barons  offered 
the  crown  of  England  to  his  son  Louis,  who  was  married 
to  Blanche  of  Castile,  a  granddaughter  of  Henry  II.,  he 
permitted  the  prince  to  grasp  the  prize.  With  a  large 
army  Louis  landed  at  Sandwich,  entered  London  amidst 
the  jubilations  of  the  rescued  city,  and,  being  led  in  pro- 
cession to  St.  Paul's,  received  homage  and  took  the  cove- 
nants usually  taken  by  kings  on  their  accession.  Simon 
Langton,  brother  of  the  archbishop,  was  made  chancellor, 
and  preached  on  the  occasion.  In  his  manifesto  Louis 
denounced  John  as  incapable  of  reigning,  because  he  had 
been  attainted  of  felony  for  the  murder  of  Arthur  in  the 
court  of  his  French  peers,  an  argument  which  could 
apply  only  to  the  French  fiefs.  He  set  up  the  hereditary 
claim  of  his  wife  Blanche,  who,  even  supposing  John  and 
John's  son  to  be  set  aside,  was  far  removed  from  the  next 
place  in  the  succession.  His  claim  really  rested,  like  that 
of  Dutch  William  at  a  later  day,  on  his  election  by  the 
nation  in  place  of  a  deposed  tyrant.  Innocent,  in  argu- 
ing the  case,  allowed  it  to  appear  that  in  his  eyes  anointed 
kings  were  above  the  law  of  murder  and  might  by  virtue 
of  their  office  take  life,  as  John  had  taken  the  life  of 
Arthur,  without  a  trial.  The  tide  ran  rapidly  in  favour 
of  the  French  prince.  County  after  county  came  over 
to  him.  The  king  of  Scots  and  the  princes  of  Wales 
acknowledged  him.  John  was  deserted  even  by  some  of 
his  foreign  soldiers  and  by  his  bastard  brother  and  stout 
partisan,  Salisbury. 

John  had  still  some  strong  castles  in  his  hands  and  some 
soldiers  of  mark,  among  others  the  redoubtable  Fawkes  de 
Breaute,  a  Norman  adventurer,  on  his  side.  He  was  still 
energetically  protected  by  his  suzerain  the  pope,  who,  in 


144  THE   UNITED    KINGDOM  CHAP,  vi 

the  person  of  his  legate  Gualo,  was  with  the  king,  and 
launched  against  Louis  and  all  his  partisans  excommuni- 
cations which  the  legate  published  on  the  spot.  But  at 

1216  this  time  Innocent  suddenly  died,  and  his  death  seemed 
to  give  the  last  blow  to  the  royalist  cause.  The  barons, 
under  the  Earl  of  Nevers,  besieged  Windsor.  Louis  sat 
down  before  Dover,  where,  though  he  had  with  him  his 
father's  famous  engine  called  "Malvoisin,"  he  was  kept 
out  of  range  by  the  stout-hearted  and  staunchly  royalist 
governor  Hubert  De  Burgh,  and  was  at  last  compelled  to 
turn  the  siege  into  a  blockade.  John  meanwhile  moved 
about  ravaging  the  estates  of  his  enemies.  An  attempt 
was  made  to  surprise  him  at  Cambridge  by  a  forced 
march,  but  he  escaped.  He  was,  however,  pushed  north- 
ward. Soon  afterwards  he  lost  his  waggon  and  sumpter 
train  with  his  treasure  and  regalia  in  the  Wash.  The 

1216  same  night,  of  chagrin,  of  surfeit,  or  of  poison,  he  died  in 
the  castle  of  Newark.  His  mercenaries,  who  seem  to  have 
remained  faithful  to  their  dead  master,  escorted  his  corpse 
across  the  country  to  the  church  of  Worcester,  where, 
according  to  his  own  last  wish,  it  was  buried.  Fontevraud, 
the  burial-place  of  his  house,  belonged  to  his  house  no 
more. 


CHAPTER   VII 

HENRY  III 
BORN  1207;  SUCCEEDED  1216;  DIED  1272 

VX7E  are  coming  to  the  birth  of  parliament.  Its  natal 
hour  is  the  zenith  of  the  catholic  middle  age. 
In  spite  of  ecclesiastical  corruption  and  disorder,  religious 
faith  is  still  strong.  Its  symbols,  cathedrals  and  churches, 
rise,  full  of  the  poetry  of  religion,  and  not  less  transcen- 
dent as  works  of  art  than  Greek  sculpture,  the  Homeric 
poems,  or  the  drama  of  Shakespeare.  They  rise  above 
cities  of  houses  little  better  than  hovels,  as  the  aspira- 
tions of  the  saints  soar  above  the  things  of  earth.  Men 
are  still  leaving  all  they  have,  the  castle  hall,  the  lady's 
bower,  the  joys  of  the  chase,  to  die  on  Syrian  battle- 
fields for  the  Holy  Sepulchre.  Of  genuine  chivalry, 
which  had  in  it  a  religious  element,  this  is  the  hour. 
If  on  the  papal  throne  sits  grasping  ambition,  if  the 
Roman  Curia  is  venal,  if  in  the  palaces  of  bishops  are 
often  found  worldliness,  sycophancy,  and  corruption,  if 
the  regular  clergy  often  live  in  concubinage  and  are 
gross,  the  fire  of  religious  enthusiasm  glows  afresh 
in  the  houses  of  the  new  mendicant  orders,  Dominican 
and  Franciscan ;  the  first  destined  to  a  dreadful  fame  as 
the  agent  of  persecution,  but  eloquent  in  preaching ;  the 
second  presenting  to  the  adoration  of  the  people  the 
union  of  asceticism  with  evangelical  ecstasy  in  Francis 
VOL.  i  — 10  145 


146  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

of  Assisi.  Over  the  fiercest  religion  has  power.  Long- 
sword,  Earl  of  Salisbury,  than  whom  no  soldier  was 
fiercer,  is  comforted  in  peril  at  sea  by  the  appearance  of 
a  bright  light  and  a  beautiful  woman,  the  Blessed  Virgin, 
above  the  mast.  On  the  day  which  made  him  a  belted 
knight  he  had  given  a  taper  to  the  Mother  of  God. 
On  his  death-bed  he  sends  for  the  bishop,  and  when  the 
bishop  enters  bearing  the  body  of  the  Lord,  the  dying 
man  fastens  a  cord  round  his  own  neck  in  token  that  he 
is  a  felon  before  God,  casts  himself  on  the  floor  with 
tears  and  sobs,  and  refuses  to  be  raised  till  the  sacrament 
has  restored  him  to  divine  allegiance.  His  body  is  carried 
to  the  grave  in  a  storm,  but  as  the  tapers  burn  on,  all 
are  sure  that  the  terrible  earl  is  numbered  with  the 
sons  of  light.  The  patriots  of  the  Great  Charter  called 
themselves  the  army  of  God  and  of  Holy  Church  and 
gave  their  movement  the  character  of  a  crusade.  Public 
character  felt  the  elevating  influence  of  piety.  The 
counterparts  of  William  Marshall  and  his  compeers,  or 
of  the  patriots  who  are  now  coming  on  the  scene,  we 
shall  hardly  see  till  we  come  to  Sir  John  Eliot  arid  the 
Puritan  leaders  of  the  Long  Parliament. 

Commerce  and  maritime  life  have  been  awakening. 
The  crusades  have  stimulated  them  by  opening  inter- 
course with  the  east.  There  is  a  brisk  export  trade  in 
Cistercian  wool.  London,  Bristol,  the  Cinque  Ports,  are 
active  and  thriving.  The  Hanseatic  League  is  formed, 
12§0,  and  plants  its  factory  in  London,  though  the  factory  is 
almost  a  fortress  in  the  midst  of  a  population  jealous  of 
the  strangers  and  their  gains.  Commercial  intercourse 
with  the  free  cities  of  Italy  and  Germany  brings  the 
trader  into  contact  with  political  freedom.  The  Cinque 


vn  HENRY  III  147 

Ports,  specially  charged  with  the  defence  of  the  country 
by  sea,  display  their  force  and  spirit  in  the  political  field. 

The  awakening  of  municipal  life  has  likewise  gone  on. 
From  being  clusters  of  dwellings,  forming,  like  the  cot- 
tage or  hamlet,  part  of  the  domain  of  the  king  or  local 
lord,  and  taxable  at  his  will,  the  cities  and  towns  are 
growing  into  little  commonwealths.  Of  this  the  chief 
instrument  continues  to  be  the  mercantile  guild,  with 
its  ties  of  mutual  benevolence,  its  monopolies,  apprentice- 
ships, common  festivals,  patron  saint  and  religious  ser- 
vices, of  which  the  London  companies,  with  their  wealth 
and  their  guild  halls,  are  the  sumptuous  survivals.  One 
after  another  towns  have  been  compounding  for  their 
payments  and  slipping  their  necks  out  of  the  yoke  of 
their  lord,  whether  king,  baron,  or  abbot.  London  is 
still  at  their  head.  Her  liberties  were  an  article  in  the 
Great  Charter.  Her  Mayor,  Serlo,  the  mercer,  had  been 
one  of  its  conservators.  Her  wealth  and  her  military 
force  make  her  a  great  power,  and  of  course  a  democratic 
power,  in  the  state. 

This  is  the  age  of  universities.  At  Oxford  is  gathered, 
under  a  guild  of  teachers,  a  swarm  of  youths  thirsting 
for  the  knowledge  which  they  fancy  is  power,  quick- 
witted, inflammable,  turbulent,  drawn  most  of  them  from 
the  poorer  classes,  some  probably  from  that  of  serfs, 
democratic,  therefore,  and  full  of  social  and  political, 
as  well  as  intellectual,  unrest.  Scholastic  philosophy 
sharpens  their  wits  and  gives  them  a  habit  of  speculation 
and  of  dealing  with  first  principles  which  is  not  in  the 
political  or  social  sphere,  as  it  is  in  philosophy,  shackled  by 
the  dogmatic  creed  of  the  church.  In  the  political  poems, 
which  emanate  probably  from  this  quarter,  we  find  the 


148  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

principles  of  constitutional  monarchy  laid  down  with 
surprising  clearness  ;  "  Let  the  community  of  the  realm 
be  consulted,  and  let  us  know  the  mind  of  the  nation  at 
large,  which  best  understands  its  own  laws."  "What 
restraint  does  the  law  lay  on  kings?  Restraint  from 
sullying  themselves  by  departure  from  the  law  of  right. 
This  limitation  is  not  servitude ;  it  is  the  enhancement 
of  true  majesty."  Such  words  might  have  been  uttered 
by  Eliot  or  Pym.  The  Franciscans,  however,  who  had 
set  out  by  renouncing,  like  their  angelic  and  child-like 
founder,  the  wisdom  as  well  as  the  pomp  of  the  world, 
presently  began  to  see  that  knowledge  as  well  as  riches 
might  be  lawfully  acquired  and  used  for  the  advancement 
of  religion.  They  entered  the  universities,  occupied  the 
chairs  of  the  teachers,  aspired  to  the  control  of  the  sys- 
tem, and  by  their  papal  principles  impaired  academical 
freedom.  To  counteract  their  influence.  Walter  De  Mer- 
ton  founded  his  secular  college,  the  first  of  the  line. 

The  chronicler  of  the  age,  Matthew  Paris,  is  a  reformer 
and  a  liberal.  The  thrilling  vindication  of  the  elective 
system  which  he  puts  into  the  mouth  of  the  archbishop 
who  crowned  John  is  probably  the  expression  of  his  own 
sentiments  ;  "  Hearken,  all  present  here  !  Know  that  no 
man  has  any  right  to  succeed  to  the  kingdom  unless  he 
be  chosen  of  the  whole  realm,  after  invocation  of  the 
Holy  Spirit's  grace,  and  unless  he  be  manifestly  thereunto 
called  by  the  pre-eminence  of  his  character  and  con- 
versation, after  the  pattern  of  Saul,  the  first  anointed 
king  whom  God  set  over  His  people,  although  he  was 
not  of  royal  race,  as  after  him  He  set  David  ;  the  first 
being  chosen  for  energy  and  fitness  for  the  royal  dig- 
nity, the  second  for  humility  and  holiness ;  that  so  he 


vii  HENRY   III  149 

who  surpassed  other  men  in  the  realm  in  vigour  should 
also  be  preferred  before  them  in  authority  and  power. 
But,  indeed,  if  there  be  one  of  the  dead  king's  race  who 
excelleth,  that  one  should  be  the  more  promptly  and  will- 
ingly chosen."  Bracton,  the  law  writer,  at  the  end  of 
this  reign,  lays  it  down  that  the  king  must  be  subject  to 
God  and  the  law ;  for  the  law  makes  him  king.  He 
puts  above  the  king,  not  only  God  and  the  law  by  which 
he  is  made  king,  but  his  court  of  earls  and  barons,  who 
are  his  associates  and  ought  to  bridle  him  if  he  is  with- 
out the  bridle  of  the  law.  These  medieval  philosophers 
seem  to  have  grasped  the  principle  that  the  aim  should  be 
not  mere  liberty,  but  the  submission  of  all  to  law.  The 
passage  of  Bracton  is  cited  by  Milton  in  his  Defence  of 
the  People  of  England  for  the  deposition  of  Charles  I. 
Thus  the  two  great  groups  of  English  Liberals  stretch 
out  their  hands  across  the  ages  to  each  other. 

With  the  tyrant  died  hatred  of  the  tyranny.  Henry, 
John's  heir,  was  only  nine  years  old.  But  the  Earl  of  1216 
Pembroke  set  the  boy  upon  his  father's  throne,  had  him 
crowned  with  a  plain  circlet  of  gold,  in  lieu  of  the  royal 
crown,  which  was  not  within  reach,  and,  to  show  that  all 
was  changed,  republished  the  Great  Charter  in  his  name. 
The  great  political  clauses  regulating  the  calling  of  the 
common  council,  and  requiring  its  assent  to  taxation, 
were  provisionally  omitted  for  reasons  unassigned,  perhaps 
because  they  seemed  to  trench  too  much  on  the  royal 
authority,  which  was  now  in  better  hands  ;  but  the  spirit 
of  the  clauses  lived.  The  forest  clauses  were  improved  1217 
and  thrown  into  a  separate  Charter  of  Forests,  coupled 
with  the  Great  Charter  itself,  and  hardly  less  prized 
by  the  people.  The  heart  of  the  nation  turned  from 


150  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

the  French  pretender  to  the  native  heir.  Louis,  more- 
over, was  suspected  of  having  formed  sinister  designs. 
His  English  partisans  fell  away.  His  star  waned ;  he 
was  beaten  in  a  battle  which  the  victors  in  mockery 

1217  called  the  Fair  of  Lincoln.  A  French  fleet  bringing  him 
reinforcements  under  the  corsair  Eustace  the  Monk  was 

1217  defeated  and  destroyed  by  a  Cinque  Ports  fleet,  far  in- 
ferior in  number,  under  Hubert  De  Burgh,  warden  of 
Dover  Castle,  whose  bold  and  masterly  tactics  marked 
him  as  a  precursor  of  Blake  and  Nelson.  Louis  retired 
from  England,  Pembroke's  statesmanship  making  a  golden 

1217  bridge  for  his  retreat.  The  treaty  of  Lambeth  secured 
to  the  patriot  barons  that  for  which  they  had  fought,  and 
included  a  general  amnesty.  The  good  sense  and  moder- 
ation of  its  framers  put  to  shame  the  implacable  and 
blood-thirsty  violence  which  in  times  more  civilized  has 
disgraced  the  combatants  in  civil  war. 

There  was  a  long  minority.     During  the  first  part  of 

1216  it  Pembroke  was  regent.  His  election  by  the  barons 
was  the  first  instance  of  the  creation  of  a  regency  by 
the  national  council.  At  the  regent's  side  was  Gualo,  the 
legate  of  the  pope,  whose  ward,  by  John's  surrender, 
the  young  king  was.  Of  Innocent  III.  and  his  dom- 
ination the  world  was  rid.  Gualo  did  well.  Stephen 
Langton  also,  restored  to  his  archbishopric,  upheld  to 
the  end  of  his  life  the  cause  of  order,  freedom,  and  the 
Charter.  Power  afterwards  passed  into  the  hands  of 
Hubert  De  Burgh,  the  victor  of  Dover,  a  stalwart  and 
patriotic  man.  The  regency  had  to  contend  with  an 
evil  element  in  the  royalist  party,  the  relic  of  John's 
council  of  iniquity,  notably  with  the  captain  of  his 
mercenaries,  Fawkes  De  Breaute,  who  set  himself  above 


vii  HENRY   III  161 

the  law  and  commenced  a  reign  of  violence.  Stephen  1224 
Langton  helping  with  bell,  book,  and  candle,  the  brigand 
was  crushed  and  driven  from  the  realm.  The  siege  of 
his  fortress  with  battering  engines,  sapping  machines, 
and  movable  towers,  seems  to  show  that  the  military 
engineer  had  brought  back  lessons  from  the  crusades, 
that  the  attack  was  now  gaining  upon  the  defence,  and 
the  strongholds  of  feudalism  were  losing  their  strength. 
De  Burgh  appears  to  have  been  an  honest  minister,  and 
faithful  to  the  crown ;  but  he  was  not  one  of  the  nobil- 
ity, and  partly  perhaps  on  that  account,  incurred  jeal- 
ousy and  became  unpopular ;  hatred  of  him  taking  the 
usual  form  of  charges  of  embezzlement,  which,  when  the 
accounts  of  government  were  not  public,  could  always 
be  circulated  and  believed.  He  had  an  unscrupulous 
rival  in  Peter  Des  Roches,  Bishop  of  Winchester  and 
chief  minister,  a  soldier  turned  churchman  for  prefer- 
ment, and,  as  satire  said,  quick  at  accounts,  slow  at  the 
Gospel,  and  fonder  of  lucre  than  of  Luke.  While  the 
minority  lasted,  the  council  carried  on  the  government, 
thus  acquiring  stability  and  importance  approaching  those 
of  the  privy  council,  which  in  later  times  was,  under  the 
king,  the  government  of  the  realm.  It  has  been  re- 
marked that  the  political  conflict  of  this  reign  assumes 
largely  the  character  of  an  effort  to  put  better  coun- 
sellors about  the  king,  thus  in  some  measure  anticipating 
the  cabinet  system. 

The  character  of  Henry  III.  as  he  grew  up  proved 
not  unlike  that  of  Edward  the  Confessor,  whom  he 
adored  and  had  been  disposed  to  imitate  in  false  chas- 
tity, though  happily  he  thought  better  of  it  and  left  a 
memorable  son.  He  was  well  disposed,  amiable,  and 


152  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

affectionate.  His  domestic  life  was  pure  and  a  good 
example  to  his  people.  Physically  he  showed  on  the 
battlefield  that  he  was  not  wanting  in  courage.  Morally 
he  was  weak.  His  heart,  it  was  said,  was  as  easily 
moulded  as  wax,  and  those  who  set  themselves  to  mould 
it  were  too  likely  to  be  evil.  From  weakness  more  than 
from  perfidy  he  was  faithless.  He  was  very  superstitious, 
devoted  to  the  papacy,  addicted  to  relics,  and  never  so 
much  himself  as  when  he  was  rapturously  carrying  in 
procession  the  vial  of  the  Holy  Blood.  The  best  part 
of  him  was  his  taste  for  church  art,  which  he  showed 
in  rebuilding  Westminster  Abbey.  While  he  was  feeble, 
he  was  fond  of  his  prerogative,  and  provoked  the  patri- 
otic effort  which  developed  the  constitution. 

Henry's  first  sin  was  in  giving  his  waxen  heart  to  be 
moulded  by  the  wily  Poitevin,  Peter  Des  Roches,  and 
not  only  discarding  but  ungratefully  persecuting  Hubert 
De  Burgh,  on  whom,  when  he  was  dragged  from  sanct- 
uary by  the  king's  soldiery,  a  patriot  blacksmith  is  said 
to  have  refused  to  fasten  fetters.  Des  Roches,  besides 
his  character,  was  an  alien  and  had  Poitevin,  not  Eng- 
lish, notions  of  government.  He  brought  other  aliens 
with  him  to  the  pillage  of  England.  Afterwards  came 
two  fresh  flights,  the  kindred  of  Henry's  queen  Eleanor 
of  Provence,  and  the  children  of  his  mother  Isabel,  nick- 
named from  her  mischief-making  Jezebel,  by  her  second 
husband  the  Count  of  La  Marche.  To  these  aliens 
England  was  a  mine.  On  them  were  showered  favours, 
honours,  wealth,  from  a  treasury  running  low.  To  them 
were  given  in  marriage  rich  wards  of  the  crown.  To  them 
were  consigned  royal  castles.  Their  inroad  was  almost 
a  second  French  invasion.  Besides  the  influence  of  kin- 


vii  HENRY   III  153 

ship,  to  which  Henry  seems  to  have  been  fatuously  open, 
their  manners  would  be  more  courtly  than  those  of  the 
islanders,  their  notions  of  royalty  would  be  higher,  and 
they  would  be  bound,  with  all  their  fortresses  and  es- 
tates, to  the  royal  interest.  They  behaved  as  if  they 
were  in  a  conquered  country.  William  De  Valence, 
castellan  of  Hertford,  killed  the  deer  in  the  Bishop 
of  Ely's  park,  then  broke  into  the  episcopal  cellar,  made 
his  grooms  drunk  with  the  wine,  and  let  the  rest  run 
out.  Boniface  of  Savoy,  the  queen's  uncle,  a  more  than 
worldly  youth,  was  thrust  into  the  archbishopric  of  Can-  1241 
terbury.  For  thirteen  years  he  mingled  in  the  wars 
and  intrigues  of  the  continent,  at  the  same  time  draw- 
ing the  revenues  of  his  neglected  see.  Intruding  him- 
self as  Visitor  into  the  convent  of  St.  Bartholomew,  and 
finding  his  authority  questioned,  though  he  had  been 
received  with  profound  reverence,  he  fell  on  the  grey- 
haired  prior  and  beat  him  brutally  with  his  fists,  while 
his  train,  following  his  example,  beat  the  monks.  Com- 
plaining to  the  king,  the  victims  were  dismissed  with  a 
scoff.  Queen  Eleanor  made  herself  so  unpopular  with 
the  Londoners  by  her  bearing  and  her  exactions,  that 
in  the  end  they  pelted  her  as  she  passed  along  the  river. 
A  justiciar  as  regent  was  no  longer  so  much  needed, 
the  king  being  regularly  resident  in  England.  But 
instead  of  appointing  other  great  officers  of  state,  who 
as  national  functionaries  would  have  been  restraints  upon 
his  personal  rule,  Henry,  full  of  high  monarchical  no- 
tions, chose,  all  unfit  for  government  as  he  was,  to  carry 
on  the  administration  by  himself.  If  he  took  advice,  it 
was  that  of  a  clerical  adventurer  like  John  Mansel, 
who  accumulated  a  mass  of  church  preferment  in  that 


154  THE  UNITED  KINGDOM  CHAP. 

evil  service.  To  get  the  responsible  offices  of  state  duly 
filled  by  men  in  whom  the  nation  had  confidence  was 
consequently  one  of  the  objects  of  reformers  during 
this  reign. 

On  his  favourites  and  on  his  taste  for  church  art 
and  for  pageantry  Henry's  revenues  were  lavished. 
Further  outlay  he  incurred  by  wars  in  Gascony,  un- 
happily retained  when  Normandy  and  Anjou  were  lost, 
which  were  misconducted  and  brought  him  shame.  The 
domain  of  the  crown  had  by  this  time  been  reduced 
by  improvident  grants,  so  that  it  was  impossible  for 
the  king  to  live,  as  the  phrase  of  reformers  in  after 
times  ran,  "of  his  own."  Disgraced  and  despised,  if 
not  detested,  Henry  was  always  coming  for  money  to 
the  parliament,  by  which  momentous  name  the  assembly 
of  prelates  and  barons  was  already  called.  Failing  to 
obtain  regular  aids,  he  practised  irregular  extortion, 
especially  on  London,  upon  whose  charter  of  liberties 
he  trampled  with  his  tallages,  and  whose  citizens  he 
forced  to  shut  up  their  shops  and  bring  their  goods  in 
stormy  weather  to  a  fair  at  Westminster,  that  he,  as 
lord  of  the  fair-ground,  might  reap  the  dues.  Deeply, 
too,  he  dipped  with  his  royal  hand  into  the  coffers  of 
the  Jews,  which  were  then  replenished  by  extortion  from 
the  people.  By  constant  recourse  to  the  council  of  the 
realm  for  supplies,  the  king  could  not  help  impressing 
upon  it  the  character  of  holder  of  the  national  purse, 
and  thus  suggesting  the  exaction  of  redress  of  grievances 
by  denial  of  supplies. 

By  natural  bent  the  king  was  papal,  and  he  was  always 
in  need  of  the  pope's  dispensing  power  to  release  him 
from  his  oaths.  The  papacy,  on  the  other  hand,  wanted 


vii  HENRY  III  155 

money  for  its  war  of  supremacy  with  the  Emperor,  who 
was  the  embodiment  of  the  lay  power.  That  struggle 
was  still  raging,  and  nothing  less  than  the  suprem- 
acy was  at  stake ;  compromise  or  adjustment  was  out 
of  the  question.  Popes  were  bellowing  their  loudest  in 
bad  Latin  ;  emperors  were  responding  in  the  same  strain. 
The  successor  of  St.  Peter  saluted  the  heir  of  the  Caesars 
as  the  great  dragon  and  the  anti-Christ.  The  heir  of  the 
Caesars  saluted  the  successor  of  St.  Peter  as  the  beast  of 
blasphemy  and  the  king  of  plagues.  The  Peter  of  the 
Vatican  warred,  as  usual,  with  the  sword  which  the 
Peter  of  the  Gospel  had  been  commanded  to  put  up, 
by  instigating  rebellion  and  kindling  war.  With  the 
connivance  of  the  king,  the  pope  wrung,  under  various 
pretexts,  vast  sums  from  the  English  clergy,  whom  he 
treated  as  his  vassals  and  his  tributaries,  importing  the 
idea  of  feudal  sovereignty,  then  dominant,  into  ecclesi- 
astical headship,  while  they,  having  no  Great  Charter, 
were  without  protection  against  their  tyrant's  demands. 
He  further,  under  cover  of  providing  fit  persons  for 
succession  to  benefices,  grasped  for  his  Italians  a  large 
share  of  the  patronage  of  the  English  church.  Three 
hundred  benefices  at  one  swoop  he  demanded  for  his 
creatures,  who  were  to  draw  the  revenues  in  Italy. 
Appeals  and  citations  to  the  Roman  Curia,  notoriously 
corrupt  and  venal,  were  multiplied.  Pillaged  at  once 
by  pope,  king,  and  alien  favourites,  England  groaned 
aloud.  The  extortions  of  the  pope  would  be  felt  the 
more  because  to  the  English  people  the  Italian  papacy 
was  thoroughly  a  foreign  power.  Dearths,  due  to 
local  failure  of  harvests,  there  being  no  good  means  of 
distribution,  occurring  ever  and  anon  in  what  some 


156  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

have  regarded  as  the  golden  age  of  labour,  added  to  the 
discontent. 

Against  the  ecclesiastical  abuses  uprose  in  the  early 
part  of  the  reign  Edmund,  Archbishop  of  Canterbury, 
a  saint  of  the  type  of  Anselm,  but  far  weaker,  who, 
after  a  vain  struggle,  sinking  into  despair,  went  to  end 
his  days  abroad  ;  uprose  with  far  more  force  Grosseteste, 
Bishop  of  Lincoln  and  chancellor  of  the  university  of 
Oxford,  the  intellectual  light  and  master  spirit  of  his 
age,  orthodox,  papal,  a  friend  of  the  friars,  but  a  reso- 
lute enemy  and  a  bold  denouncer,  even  in  the  pope's 
teeth,  of  ecclesiastical  abuse,  with  Walter  De  Cantelupe, 
the  staunchly  patriot  Bishop  of  Worcester,  at  his  side ; 
uprose  in  a  fitful  and  feeble  way  the  national  clergy, 
patriotic  for  the  most  part  as  well  as  opposed  to  papal 
spoliation  of  their  order,  but  lacking  courage  to  beard 
the  pope,  especially  when  he  had  the  king  on  his  side  ; 
uprose  the  baronage,  which  addressed  to  the  pope  a 
strong,  but  ineffectual  protest ;  uprose  a  rougher  cham- 
pion, Sir  Robert  Twenge,  a  patron  of  a  living,  who, 
having  been  robbed  of  his  presentation,  founded  a  secret 
society  which  did  popular  justice  on  the  Italians  and  the 
agencies  of  rapine.  Oxford  students,  too,  showed  their 
temper  to  the  papal  legate,  Otho,  when  he  visited  their 
city.  His  brother,  who,  to  guard  him  from  poison,  acted 
as  his  cook,  having  thrown  scalding  broth  on  one  of 
their  number  while  they  were  crowding  round  the  leg- 
1237  ate's  quarters,  they  assaulted  the  legate's  train  with 
bows  and  arrows,  drove  him  from  the  city,  and  under- 
went excommunication  for  the  riot.  Doctrinal  revolt 
as  yet  there  was  none,  but  the  revolt  against  papal 
extortion  was  the  faint  dawn  of  the  Reformation.  Papal 


vii  HENRY   III  157 

usurpation,  however,  was  still  at  its  zenith,  and  its  two 
new  bodies  of  militia,  the  Dominicans  and  the  Francis- 
cans, well  served  the  power  which  had  given  them  birth. 

Against  the  political  and  fiscal  abuses  the  barons  pro- 
tested in  the  council  of  the  realm.  Taking  advantage  of 
the  king's  need,  they  forced  him  again  and  again  to  renew 
the  Great  Charter.  This  he  did  with  the  most  awful 
forms  which  the  church  could  devise  to  bind  his  faith, 
knowing  that  whatever  was  bound,  however  tightly,  the 
pope  could  loose.  Henry  III.  had  not  like  his  father  a 
body  of  mercenaries  to  make  him  independent  of  political 
support.  He  could  not  afford  to  pay  for  it,  if  he  desired. 
He  had  to  manage  his  parliament,  by  which  name  the 
national  council  may  henceforth  be  called,  and  the  par- 
liament becomes  more  at  once  of  a  tax-granting  and  a 
representative  body,  delegates  of  the  knights  being  sum- 
moned on  occasion.  A  leader  only  was  wanting  to  the 
opposition.  The  Earl  of  Chester  stood  forth,  but  he  soon  1232 
died.  Richard  Marshall,  son  of  the  great  regent,  took  1232 
arms  with  the  sinister  aid  of  the  marauding  Welsh,  but 
in  the  end  he  was  driven  or  decoyed  to  Ireland  and  was 
there  done  to  death.  Richard,  Earl  of  Cornwall,  the  1234 
king's  brother,  was  much  wiser  than  the  king,  as  well  as 
powerful  from  his  immense  wealth,  and  he  was  on  the 
side  of  reform.  But  for  strong  measures  he  stood  too 
near  the  throne,  and  his  wealth  having  elected  him  King 
of  the  Romans,  his  thoughts  were  turned  to  a  foreign 
field. 

At  last  came  both  the  hour  and  the  man.  The  hour 
came  when  the  silly  king,  having  swallowed  the  pope's 
bait  and  accepted  for  his  younger  son  Edmund  the  king- 
dom of  Sicily,  of  which  the  pope  called  himself  suzerain, 


168  THE  UNITED  KINGDOM  CHAP. 

in  pursuit  of  his  chimera  got  desperately  into  the  pope's 
debt,  pawned  his  kingdom  and  applied  to  his  barons  for 
money.  The  man  came  in  Simon  De  Montfort,  a  for- 
eigner, who  had  inherited  the  English  earldom  of  Leices- 
ter, and  to  whom,  probably  to  bring  that  earldom  with 
the  other  great  places  into  the  royal  family,  the  king  had 
given  his  sister  Eleanor  in  marriage.  Simon  De  Mont- 
fort  was  an  adventurer,  the  son  of  that  most  hateful  of 
all  adventurers  who  led,  under  Innocent  III.,  the  crusade 
of  extermination  against  the  Albigenses.  Whether  he 
was  himself  more  adventurer  or  patriot,  who,  through 
the  mist  of  ages,  can  discern?  He  was  the  friend  of 
Grosseteste  and  of  the  good  and  learned  Adam  De 
Marisco.  He  was  highly  religious  and  had  the  clergy, 
the  lower  clergy  at  least,  on  his  side.  He  had  great  in- 
1248  fluence  over  the  young.  He  had  been  sent  as  governor 
to  Gascony  ;  had  apparently  acted  well ;  but  had  been 
embroiled,  as  it  was  easy  to  be,  with  the  Gascons,  and 
afterwards  with  the  king,  who  suspected  his  ambition  and 
avowed  that  he  feared  him  more  than  thunder.  He  now 

1257  stood  forth  as  leader  of  the  opposition  in  conjunction  with 
the  Earl  of  Gloucester,  an  English  magnate  over  whom 
he  had  gained  influence. 

1258  To  a  parliament  at  Oxford,  called  by  the  royalists  the 
Mad  Parliament,  the  barons  came  armed,  with  their  re- 
tainers.    They  preferred  a  long   list  of   grievances;  be- 
stowal on  foreigners  of  the  hands  of  English  heiresses  and 
of  the  custody  of  castles,  abuse  of  feudal  service,  abuse  of 
escheats,  abuse   of  purveyance,  vexatious  lines  for   non- 
attendance  at  the  courts  of  the  itinerant  justices  or  the 
sheriff's  court,  illegal  castle-building,  use  of  the  Jews  for 
the  purposes  of  extortion.     They  forced  the  king  to  swear 


vii  •  HENRY  III  159 

to  an  agreement  called  the  Provisions  of  Oxford,  by  which  1258 
in  effect  power  was  taken  from  him  for  the  time  and  vested 
in  a  baronial  board  of  reform  authorized  to  appoint  the 
officers  of  state  and  the  sheriffs,  hold  the  royal  castles, 
rid  the  realm  of  the  foreigners,  and  put  an  end  to  abuses 
both  in  church  and  state.  Three  parliaments  were  to  be 
held  every  year.  The  king,  restraint  of  whom  was  the 
object,  was  to  be  assisted,  that  is,  controlled,  by  a  stand- 
ing council  of  fifteen.  The  Provisions  were  proclaimed 
in  English  as  well  as  in  French  and  Latin ;  a  proof  that 
the  barons  appealed  to  the  people  at  large.  Ostensibly 
the  board  was  composed  in  equal  parts  of  royalists  and 
patriots ;  practically  the  balance  at  once  inclined  to  the 
patriot  side.  But,  as  in  all  juntos,  jealousies  and  dissen- 
sions soon  set  in.  De  Montfort's  towering  ascendancy 
gave  umbrage  to  the  Earl  of  Gloucester,  and  probably  not 
to  him  alone.  Oligarchical  reform  moved  slowly.  So 
thought  the  knights  or  bachelors,  the  class  of  land-own- 
ing gentry  below  the  barons,  now  growing  in  strength, 
and  trained  in  local  administration,  who  came  forward 
with  a  protest.  There  is  room  to  surmise  that  Gloucester 
was  for  baronial,  De  Montfort  for  popular,  reform.  The 
king  began  to  intrigue  and  seized  the  Tower.  He  got 
from  Pope  Alexander  a  dispensation  from  his  oath,  once 
more  showing  how  far  Rome  was  the  friend  of  liberty. 
The  king's  son  Edward,  who  now  comes  upon  the  scene, 
and  who  had  also  sworn  to  the  Provisions,  refused  to 
break  his  own  oath,  and  tried  to  keep  his  father  in  the 
path  of  honour,  true  thus  early  to  the  motto  of  his  life, 
engraven  on  his  tomb,  Pactum  Serva.  There  was  an  out- 
break of  civil  war.  Then  there  was  an  appeal  to  the  king  1264 
of  France,  St.  Louis,  St.  Louis  was  a  saint  of  righteous- 


160  THE   UNITED   KINGDOA^  CHAP. 

ness  as  well  as  of  religion,  but  he  was  a  king  and  a 
Frenchman.  His  award  annulled  the  Provisions  of  Ox- 
ford and  restored  to  Henry  all  his  regal  powers,  including 
the  nomination  of  the  officers  of  state,  without  exclusion 
of  foreigners,  and  all  his  castles.  Only  the  charters  were 
saved.  It  was  not  likely  that  this  award  would  be  ac- 
cepted. De  Montfort  and  his  party  seem  to  have  treated 
it  as  self -contradictory  and,  therefore,  null,  the  Provisions 
having  been  in  accordance  with  the  charters.  London 
and  the  Cinque  Ports  appear  never  to  have  consented  to 
the  arbitration.  Civil  war  followed.  With  the  king  were 
most  of  the  magnates,  both  lay  and  ecclesiastical,  though 
the  young  De  Clare,  the  new  Earl  of  Gloucester,  felt 
De  Montfort's  influence  on  youth  ;  while  two  bishops, 
Thomas  and  Walter  De  Cantelupe,  remained  true  to  the 
patriot  cause.  With  De  Montfort  were  the  lesser  barons, 
the  knights  or  gentry,  London,  the  Cinque  Ports,  always 
high-hearted  and  boisterous,  and  the  cities  generally,  the 
body  of  the  clergy,  the  universities,  and  the  mass  of  the 
people.  It  is  thought  not  unlikely  that  the  Walter  De 
Weshyngton  in  his  camp  was  an  ancestor  of  Washington. 
There  were  some  minor  actions  and  sieges,  the  most 
notable  incident  in  which  was  the  appearance  of  a  body 
of  Oxford  students  under  their  banner  against  the  king 
at  Northampton.  Then  the  war  gathered  to  a  head  at 
1264  Lewes.  The  castle  and  priory  at  Lewes  were  occupied 
by  the  royal  army  under  the  king,  his  son  Edward,  and 
his  brother  Richard,  King  of  the  Romans,  now  on  his  side. 
Upon  them  moved  De  Montfort  from  London,  the  citizens 
of  which  were  in  force  under  his  banner.  A  last  bid  for 
peace,  made  through  the  bishops  of  Worcester  and  Lon- 
don, failed,  and  both  sides  appealed  to  the  sword.  The 


vii  HENRY   III  161 

battle  was  a  medieval  prototype  of  the  battles  between 
Cavalier  and  Puritan  at  an  after  day.  By  the  royalists 
the  night  before  was  spent  ill  revelry  and  debauchery, 
which  even  profaned  the  altar.  De  Montfort,  by  assump- 
tion of  the  cross,  prayer,  and  confession,  gave  his  soldiers 
the  character  of  crusaders.  On  the  point  of  going  into 
action  they  all  fell  on  the  ground  in  prayer,  stretching 
out  their  arms  in  the  form  of  a  cross.  Young  Edward, 
hot  as  Rupert,  charged  headlong  on  the  Londoners,  whom 
he  longed  to  punish  for  insulting  and  pelting  his  mother, 
broke  them,  and  pursued  them  with  great  slaughter  far 
over  the  downs.  He  returned  from  the  pursuit,  like 
Rupert,  to  find  that  in  his  absence  the  day  had  been  lost. 
De  Montfort,  an  experienced  commander,  like  Cromwell, 
with  his  men  well  in  hand,  had  beaten  the  main  body  of 
the  royal  army  and  put  it  to  flight,  many  a  royalist  being 
swallowed  up  with  his  charger  in  the  morass.  The  king, 
after  fighting  hard,  was  shut  up  in  the  priory.  His 
brother,  Earl  Richard,  had  fled  and  had  been  captured, 
amid  the  jeers  of  his  enemies,  in  a  wind-mill.  Edward, 
after  a  vain  reconnaissance,  found  that  there  was  nothing 
for  it  but  surrender.  A  capitulation,  called  the  Mise  of 
Lewes,  followed ;  the  Provisions  of  Oxford  were  con- 
firmed, and  Henry  was  compelled  to  accept  a  constitution 
binding  him  to  govern  by  the  advice  of  a  council  of  nine 
native  Englishmen,  which  would  have  made  him  a  puppet 
king. 

Under  the  auspices  of  De  Montfort  a  parliament  was   1265 
called,  to  which  were  summoned,  besides  barons  and  pre- 
lates, four  knights  from  each  shire.     That  assembly  put 
the  government   into  the  hands  of   nine  councillors  by 
whom  the  king  was  to  be  guided,  and  who  were  to  ap- 

VOL.  I  —  10 


162  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

point  the  great  officers  of  state.  This  was  a  veiled  king- 
ship of  De  Montfort.  The  royalist  party  was  still  alive 
and  active,  and  the  queert  had  got  an  army  on  foot  in 
France,  to  meet  which  England  was  summoned  to  as- 
semble in  warlike  array  on  Barham  Down,  while  the 
papacy  continued  to  launch  its  thunderbolts  in  aid  of  the 
king. 

De  Montfort  threw  himself  on  the  nation.  He  had  the 
bulk  of  it  with  him;  while  the  body  of  the  clergy,  ground 
between  pope  and  king,  was  for  ecclesiastical  independence 
and  reform.  He  called  a  parliament  to  which,  besides 
the  few  magnates  of  his  party,  some  bishops,  and  a  great 
body  of  the  minor  dignitaries  of  the  church,  were  sum- 
moned two  knights  from  each  county  and  two  burghers 
from  each  borough.  Representation  was  not  by  any  means 
a  new  thing.  It  was  the  natural  and  necessary  expedient 
when  the  sense  of  any  district  or  large  body  of  people  was 
to  be  taken,  and  had  been  used  by  preceding  kings  for  the 
purpose  both  of  assessment  and  of  information.  It  entered 
into  the  constitution  of  the  county  court,  to  which  the 
boroughs  sent  deputies.  There  was  an  example  of  it  in 
the  councils  of  the  church.  But  representation  of  the 
people  in  parliament  was  new.  De  Montfort's  parliament, 
however,  if  it  was  full,  was  not  free,  being  confined  to  his 
partisans.  Nor  was  it  called  for  legislation,  but  to  meet  a 
constitutional  crisis.  The  measure  was  revolutionary,  and 
was  not  repeated  for  many  years.  Its  importance  was  not 
felt  at  the  time  as  it  is  felt  now.  Nevertheless,  the  child 
had  been  born ;  and  though  the  father  of  the  institution 
lived  not  to  cherish  it,  a  foster-father  in  the  disguise 
of  an  enemy  was  at  hand. 

Such  a  state  of  things  as  a  monarchy  in  abeyance  with 


vii  HENRY   III  163 

an  unavowed  dictatorship  could  not  last.  The  nation 
wanted  a  real  king.  De  Montfort's  elevation  was  sure  to 
breed  jealousies  and  discord.  His  sons  grew  insolent  and 
affronted  his  one  supporter  among  the  high  nobility, 
the  Earl  of  Gloucester.  The  pope  was  always  active  on 
the  side  of  his  royal  liegeman.  Edward  escaped  from  the 
captivity  in  which  as  a  hostage  he  had  been  held,  and  gave 
the  royalists  a  leader.  He  gave  them  a  popular  leader  by 
pledging  himself  to  the  Earl  of  Gloucester  to  carry  out  the 
reforms.  Civil  war  again  broke  out,  and  now  Edward  1265 
was  a  general.  From  the  tower  of  Evesham  Abbey,  De 
Montfort,  looking  towards  Kenilworth,  whence  he  ex- 
pected to  see  his  son's  force  marching  to  his  aid,  saw 
instead  the  army  of  Edward,  who  had  surprised  the  young 
De  Montfort's  army  in  its  camp,  marching  to  overwhelm 
him.  He  could  not  help  paying  a  soldier's  meed  of  praise 
to  the  order  in  which  the  foe  came  on.  But  he  knew  that 
all  was  over.  "  May  the  Lord,"  he  said,  "  have  mercy  on 
our  souls,  for  our  bodies  are  in  the  enemy's  power."  He 
fell  fighting  like  a  lion,  with  one  of  his  sons  and  his 
friends,  who,  though  he  had  conjured  them  to  save  them- 
selves, had  refused  to  leave  his  side.  His  corpse  was 
mutilated  by  the  rage  of  the  victors.  But  the  people 
reverenced  him  as  a  saint,  miracles  were  performed  by  his 
relics,  and  to  him  rose  the  hymn, 

Salve,  Simon  Montis  Fortis, 

Totius  flos  m  ilitice  ! 
Pcenas  duras  passus  mortis, 

Protector  gentis  Anglice  ! 

Restored  royalty  was  at  first  bent  on  wreaking  its  ven- 
geance by  sweeping  confiscations.  This  drove  the  disin- 
herited to  take  up  arms,  and  De  Clare  once  more  passed 


164  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP,  vn 

to  the  side  of  opposition.  But  in  the  end,  temperate 
counsels  prevailed  and  brought  about  a  settlement.  No 
blood  was  shed  on  the  scaffold.  Nor,  though  heavy  fines 
were  imposed,  were  any  estates  ultimately  confiscated 
except  those  of  De  Montfort  and  his  sons.  The  king 
1267  ratified,  formally  at  least,  in  the  parliament  of  Marl- 
borough,  the  chief  reforms  which  had  been  sought  by  the 
patriot  barons.  Calm  presently  returned.  The  last  of 
the  storm  was  the  murder  of  Henry,  son  of  Richard,  Earl 
of  Cornwall,  by  the  two  surviving  sons  of  De  Montfort  in 

1271  the  church  at  Viterbo.     All  was  so  quiet  that  Edward  felt 
at  liberty  to  shake  off  the  dust  of  civil  strife  and  to  gratify 

1270  at  once  his  martial  spirit  and  his  piety  by  taking  part 
in  the  last  crusade.  Old  Henry  ended  his  days  in  peace. 

1272  He  would  have  been  a  good  priest ;   he  was  a  bad  king. 
That  he  was  a  king  instead  of  being  a  priest  was  not  his 
fault.     Edward,  now  thirty-three,  was  proclaimed,  though 

1272  absent,  without  opposition.  The  days  of  doubtful  succes- 
sion and  of  an  interruption  of  the  king's  peace  were  at  an 
end. 


CHAPTER   VIII 

EDWARD   I 
BORN  1239;  SUCCEEDED  1272;  DIED  1307 

TVE  MONTFORT'S  parliament  was  partisan,  revolution- 
ary, and  transient.  To  make  parliamentary  govern- 
ment national,  constitutional,  and  permanent  there  was 
needed  a  king  liberal  enough  to  desire  partnership  with 
his  people,  too  strong  to  lose  his  authority  thereby,  mag- 
nanimous enough  to  embrace  and  perpetuate  the  offspring 
of  revolution.  He  comes.  Edward  I.  is  the  greatest 
ruler  of  the  middle  age.  Louis  IX.  of  France  was  more 
saint  and  crusader  than  ruler ;  Alphonso  the  Wise  was 
more  sage  than  ruler  ;  Frederick  II.  was  not  so  much  a 
king  of  the  middle  age  as  a  Voltairean  autocrat  born 
before  his  time,  nor  did  his  work  endure. 

The  reign  of  Edward  I.  is  an  epoch  in  the  history  not 
of  England  only  but  of  the  world.  He  reigns  now 
through  the  institutions  to  which  he  gave  life  over 
almost  all  European  nations,  in  America,  in  Australia,  in 
Japan.  He  will  continue  to  reign,  even  if  his  special  in- 
stitutions should  pass  away,  as  the  statesman  who  achieved 
a  union  of  authority  with  national  opinion. 

The  favourite  saint  of  Henry  III.  was  Edward  the  Con- 
fessor. After  him  he  named  his  son.  Happily  for  the 
land  which  his  son  was  to  govern,  the  resemblance  ended 
y/ilh  the  name.  The  name,  however,  commended  the  new 

165 


166  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

king  to  the  English  people.  In  their  minds  it  was  iden- 
tified with  long-lost  liberties  and  the  good  times  of  old. 
They  fondly  traced  the  new  king's  pedigree  through 
Margaret,  the  queen  of  Malcolm  Canmore,  to  the  old 
Saxon  line.  Nor  were  they  wrong  in  thinking  that  they 
had  in  Edward  a  thoroughly  English  king.  If  he  spoke 
French  it  was  not  as  a  Norman ;  nor  was  it  Norman 
French  that  he  spoke ;  it  was  the  French  of  Paris,  the 
court  language  of  those  days  as  it  was  afterwards  of  the 
days  of  Louis  XIV.  He  spoke  English  as  well,  and  could 
speak  it  to  the  heart  of  his  people.  If  he  was  a  power 
in  Europe,  it  was  not  because  he  unhappily  held  fiefs  in 
southern  France,  but  because  he  was  a  mighty  king  of 
England.  If  Europe  respected  him  as  an  arbitrator,  it 
was  because  his  name  as  an  English  king  stood  high. 

Edward's  outward  form  has  been  well  preserved  to  us. 
He  was  tall,  strong,  and  deep-chested,  with  long  legs  to 
clip  the  saddle  and  lithe  arms  to  wield  the  sword.  The 
manly  beauty  of  his  face  was  marred  only  by  a  drooping 
eyelid.  His  hair  was  flaxen  ;  it  turned  white,  but  did 
not  fall,  nor  did  his  sight  fail  or  his  teeth  decay.  He 
had  a  slight  impediment  in  his  speech.  To  his  character 
Catholicism  may  point  as  its  highest  type  of  the  secular 
kind.  He  was  devout,  loved  the  services  of  the  church, 
practised  religious  retirement  in  holy  seasons,  gave  freely 
to  religious  foundations.  He  was  a  good  son  to  his  weak 
father  and  to  his  unpopular  mother;  to  his  mother  too 
good,  for  it  was  by  his  eagerness  to  avenge  an  insult 
offered  to  her  that  he  threw  away  victory  at  Lewes.  "  His 
domestic  life  was  perfectly  pure,  as  that  of  his  father  had 
been,  and  at  his  side  was  a  wife  whom  he  tenderly  loved, 
from  whom  he  was  never  willingly  parted,  who,  while  she 


Tin  EDWARD  I  167 

lived,  perhaps  softened  what  was  stern  in  him  and  tem- 
pered what  was  fiery.  She  had  gone  with  him  to  the 
crusade,  and  the  story  of  her  sucking  the  poison  from 
his  wound,  though  a  fiction,  might  well  have  been  true. 
The  strong  sense  of  good  faith  and  honour  expressed  in 
his  motto,  Pactum  Serva,  was  perhaps  derived  rather  from 
feudal  fealty  than  from  the  teachings  of  a  church  of 
casuistry  and  dispensations. 

In  youth  Edward's  temper  had  been  violent,  and  strange 
stories  had  been  told  of  its  outbreaks  by  the  De  Montfort 
party.  In  manhood  he  was  sometimes  too  fiery,  yet  placa- 
ble. "  Show  him  mercy?  "  he  cried,  when  his  pardon  was 
sought  for  an  offender  ;  "  I  would  show  mercy  to  a  dog 
if  he  sought  my  grace."  Having  been  insulted  across  a 
stream,  he  spurs  his  horse  into  the  water,  regardless  of 
its  depth  or  the  high  bank,  and  forgives  the  man  on  the 
other  side.  He  strikes  an  attendant  in  a  rage,  then  fines 
himself  for  having  done  it.  He  puts  a  man  who  has 
highly  offended  him  in  prison,  and  sends  an  order  that 
he  shall  be  kindly  and  courteously  treated,  but  without 
being  allowed  to  know  that  the  order  for  his  being  so 
treated  comes  from  the  king.  Coming  upon  a  band  of 
outlaws,  he  singles  out  their  gallant  leader,  engages  him 
in  combat,  vanquishes  him,  and  pardons  him  for  the  sake 
of  his  valour.  There  is  nothing  of  the  Grand  Monarch 
about  Edward  I.  His  habits  are  simple  ;  his  dress  is 
plain ;  after  his  coronation  he  never  wears  his  crown. 
His  magnificence  is  shown  only  on  occasions  of  state. 
In  war  he  exposes  himself  as  a  common  soldier,  and 
when,  after  a  narrow  escape  from  a  missile,  he  is  implored 
to  be  cautious,  replies,  "  We  have  undertaken  a  just  war 
in  the  name  of  the  Lord,  and  we  will  not  fear  what  man 


168  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

can  do  unto  us."  On  the  night  before  battle  he  lies,  like 
his  soldiers,  on  the  bare  ground,  with  his. horse  tethered 
at  his  side.  His  horse  kicks  him  and  hurts  him ;  yet  he 
commands  and  wins  the  battle  next  day.  When  he  is 
cut  off  with  his  train  on  the  Welsh  hills,  and  they  bring 
him  the  last  keg  of  wine,  having  reserved  it  for  his  use, 
he  bids  them  hand  it  round  to  all  who  share  his  peril. 
The  manners  of  his  court  appear  to  be  frank  and  free. 
His  ladies  exact  of  him  the  playful  forfeit  on  Easter 
Monday  by  hoisting  him  in  his  chair. 

1272  At  the  time  of  his  accession  Edward  was  absent  on  his 
crusade.  But  he  was  at  once  acknowledged  as  king. 
The  hereditary  principle  had  taken  firm  root.  Hence- 
forth there  is  no  accession  charter,  but  only  an  improved 
coronation  oath.  There  was  no  interruption  of  the  king's 
peace.  Two  centuries  later  it  will  be  held  that  the  king 
never  dies.  Edward  and  St.  Louis  were  the  last  of  the 
crusaders  and  the  best ;  they  went,  not  to  win  kingdoms 
for  themselves  in  Palestine,  but  to  save  the  Holy  Land. 
Throughout  his  life  of  toil  Edward  looks  forward,  not  to 
rest,  but  to  another  crusade,  in  which  his  sword,  instead 
of  being  drawn  against  Christians,  should  be  once  more 
drawn  against  the  enemies  of  Christ.  His  heart  was  in 
the  holy  war.  He  will  make  no  treaties  with  the  infidels. 
If  others  do,  he  will  stay  with  Fowin,  his  groom,  and  fight 
it  out.  He  came  home  bearing  in  his  body  the  effects  of 
the  assassin's  poisoned  dagger,  which,  however,  his  strong 
constitution  threw  off.  The  assassin,  an  emissary  of  a  fa- 
natical sect,  he  had  slain  on  the  spot ;  but  he  rebuked  his 
attendants  when  they  struck  the  corpse.  On  his  way  home 
he  showed  his  prowess  by  unhorsing  the  redoubtable  Count 
of  Chalons,  who  had  played  him  false  in  a  tournament. 


vin  EDWARD  I  169 

From  a  baronage  heading  resistance  to  royal  misrule 
and  encroachment  the  interest  of  political  history  passes 
to  a  king  who  is  a  minister  of  progress.  Mere  checks 
give  birth  to  nothing.  The  king  is  still  the  regular  mo- 
tive power  ;  he  alone  can  take  in  the  situation  and  under- 
stand the  need.  To  credit  Edward  with  a  political  theory 
would  be  too  much  ;  the  days  of  political  philosophy  were 
not  yet ;  no  one  had  yet  thought  of  framing  a  constitu- 
tion. But  Edward  had  statesmanlike  instincts  and  a 
policy.  His  policy  was  on  the  same  lines  as  that  of 
Henry  II.,  but  broader  and  more  patriotic.  For  feudal- 
ism he  aimed  at  substituting  nationality  ;  for  a  polity  of 
feudal  tenures,  a  polity  of  national  estates  ;  for  feudal 
over-lordship,  national  monarchy  ;  for  a  feudal  council  of 
tenants-in-chief,  a  council  of  national  estates  represented 
in  parliament.  The  nation  so  represented  he  meant  to 
take  into  his  councils.  That  "  what  concerned  all  ought 
to  be  approved  of  all,  the  law  of  righteousness  so  requir- 
ing, and  that  common  dangers  must  be  met  by  measures 
concerted  in  common,"  was  his  solemn  declaration  and 
the  rule  of  his  dealings  with  his  subjects.  At  the  same 
time,  he  meant  to  keep  supreme  power  in  his  own  hands, 
as  the  circumstances  of  a  time  in  which  there  was  little 
of  enlightenment  or  of  general  aptitude  for  politics  re- 
quired. He  had  also  in  his  mind  the  unification  of  the 
island,  and  he  moved  in  that  direction  when  occasion 
served.  The  real  founder  of  parliamentary  government 
he  was  ;  and,  had  he  lived,  or  not  been  thwarted  by  the 
malice  of  fortune,  he  would  in  all  probability  have  been 
the  founder  of  British  union.  Having  to  deal  as  he  had 
with  mutinous  nobles,  anti-national  ecclesiastics,  and  a 
people  ignorant  of  the  necessities  of  state,  we  cannot 


170  THB  UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

wonder  if  he  sometimes  halted  in  his  course  of  liberalism 
or  even  drew  back,  gave  way  to  his  heat  of  temper,  and 
angrily  grasping  his  sceptre  did  for  a  moment  that  which 
has  exposed  him,  the  founder  of  constitutional  govern- 
ment, to  the  charge  of  clinging  to  arbitrary  power. 

From  a  conflict  with  revolution  most  kings  have  come 
out  reactionists.  Edward  came  out  a  reorganizer  enlight- 
ened by  experience.  It  seems,  indeed,  that  something 
like  the  instrument  used  by  De  Montfort  for  the  purpose 
of  bringing  national  opinion  to  bear  in  his  own  favour 
had  been  at  once  adopted  by  his  antagonist  for  the  pur- 
pose of  quenching  the  embers  of  civil  war.  Soon  after 
his  accession,  at  all  events,  Edward  moved  in  this  direc- 
tion, seeking  always  to  carry  his  people  with  him,  and 
acting  on  his  principle  that  in  matters  of  common  con- 
cernment there  should  be  common  counsels.  He  called 
inchoate  and  tentative  parliaments  ;  provincial  parlia- 
ments ;  .parliaments  of  particular  interests,  the  commer- 
cial interest,  for  example ;  parliaments  for  particular 
objects,  in  one  case  for  the  purpose  of  giving  publicity 
and  solemnity  to  the  trial  of  a  state  criminal.  But  in 
1295  1295  he  called,  for  the  general  business  of  the  kingdom, 
a  true  and  essentially  perfect  parliament,  the  archetype  of 
all  parliaments  to  come,  consisting  of  the  three  estates  of 
the  realm ;  the  lords,  temporal  and  spiritual,  the  bishops 
and  mitred  abbots  being  lords  in  right  of  their  fiefs  ; 
the  commons,  represented  by  two  knights  elected  by  each 
county  and  two  burghers  elected  by  each  borough  ;  and 
the  body  of  the  clergy,  represented  by  their  elected  proc- 
tors. This,  afterwards  confirmed,  disciplined,  and  devel- 
oped by  centuries  of  interaction  among  its  component 
forces,  especially  between  the  House  of  Commons  and 


vin  EDWARD   I  171 

the  crown,  is  the  institution  which  has  extended  itself 
over  the  civilized  world  ;  for  even  where,  as  in  the  United 
States  and  in  France,  the  hereditary  principle  has  been 
discarded,  the  essence  of  parliamentary  government  has 
been  preserved.  The  three  estates,  lords,  commons,  and 
spiritualty,  are  the  three  great  contributory  bodies  or 
interests  of  the  realm.  It  seemed  at  one  time  as  if  there 
might  also  be  an  estate  of  merchants  taxable  in  its  own 
way.  Taxation  was  the  chief  original  function  of  parlia- 
ment as  well  as  its  key  to  power.  For  advice  in  govern- 
ment the  council  of  magnates  continues  to  exist,  but  with 
declining  authority,  since  the  holders  of  the  purse  could 
enforce  attention  to  their  advice. 

Parliamentary  government  in  England  was  not  a 
solitary  birth.  National  assemblies  under  the  different 
names  of  Parliament,  States  General,  Cortes,  Diet,  were 
elsewhere  taking  form.  Nationality  had  become  con- 
scious ;  political  life  was  awakening ;  great  interests, 
notably  that  of  commerce,  were  assuming  a  definite  form ; 
kings  were  learning  to  lean  on  the  support  of  their  people 
in  their  conflict  with  the  nobility.  Of  all  the  seeds  thus 
sown  at  the  same  time,  why  did  one  alone  take  root, 
spring  up,  and  become  a  mighty  tree,  overshadowing  the 
nations  ?  Something  was  due  to  national  character  and 
to  the  circumstances  under  which  national  character  is 
formed ;  not  a  little  was  due  to  the  foster  father  by  whom 
in  its  infancy  the  institution  was  tended.  But  the  chief 
reason  probably  was  the  coalition  in  the  Commons'  House 
of  the  representatives  of  the  knights  and  rural  free-holders 
with  those  of  the  boroughs.  The  knights  were  the  body  of 
landed  gentlemen,  who,  in  the  civil  troubles  of  the  last 
reign,  had  come  forward  to  protest  against  the  tardiness 


172  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

and  narrowness  of  oligarchical  reform.  Their  class  com- 
prised the  lesser  barons  of  the  Great  Charter,  who  were 
summoned  to  council  in  a  body  through  the  sheriff,  while 
the  greater  barons  were  summoned  personally  by  the  king's 
writ,  though  in  all  likelihood  they  rarely  took  advantage 
of  the  summons.  The  coalition  was  natural,  because  the 
knights  of  the  shire  and  the  burgesses  in  parliament  were 
alike  representatives,  while  the  lords  appeared  in  their 
own  persons.  Nor,  in  the  happy  absence  of  caste,  could 
there  fail  to  be  many  ties  between  the  town  and  the 
neighbouring  gentry,  whose  younger  sons  would  find  in 
the  town  employment  and  sometimes  wives.  Combina- 
tion with  the  landed  and  military  gentry,  whose  repre- 
sentatives were  girt  with  the  sword  of  knighthood,  a  form 
long  kept  up  in  the  election  of  knights  of  the  shire,  gave 
to  the  representatives  of  the  boroughs  a  leadership,  a 
strength,  and  a  confidence,  which  they  would  otherwise 
have  lacked.  In  Spain,  the  free  cities,  unsupported  in 
the  Cortes  by  such  an  alliance,  after  a  period  of  preco- 
cious liberty,  sank  under  the  despotism  of  Charles  V.  and 
Philip  II.  In  France,  where  all  the  gentry  were  noblesse 
and  formed  an  estate  separate  from  the  burghers  or  Tiers 
Etat,  the  States  General  succumbed  to  the  absolute  mon- 
archy, and  rose  again  in  the  form  of  the  National  As- 
sembly only  when  the  classes  had  been  fused  by  the  fire  of 
revolution. 

Knights  of  the  shire  were  elected  in  the  county  court 
by  the  whole  body  of  freeholders,  the  sheriff  presiding  and 
acting  as  returning  officer.  The  burgesses  were  elected 
by  their  fellow  burghers.  In  the  counties  freedom  of 
election  was,  no  doubt,  modified  as  soon  as  the  elec- 
tions became  important,  by  the  influence  of  the  sheriff, 


vin  EDWARD   I  173 

who  was  appointed  by  the  crown,  and  of  the  local  mag- 
nates ;  in  the  boroughs  it  would  be  modified  by  the 
distribution  of  power  among  the  burghers,  which  greatly 
varied,  municipal  government  being  in  a  state  of  growth 
and  transition.  Everywhere  the  process  would  be  rough 
and  rudimentary.  Edward  did  not  omit  to  enjoin  free- 
dom of  election. 

Thirty-seven  counties  and  a  hundred  and  sixty-six 
boroughs  were  represented  in  the  parliament  of  1295. 
In  the  boroughs  were  included  all  those  of  royal  domain, 
and  the  principal  among  the  rest;  the  number  of  bor- 
oughs being  far  greater  in  the  better  ordered  and  more 
commercial  south  than  in  the  wilder  north,  exposed  to  the 
inroads  of  the  Scotch.  But  the  selection  of  the  boroughs 
was  now  and  long  afterwards  in  the  hands  of  the  crown, 
which  afterwards  used  the  power  for  the  purpose  of  pack- 
ing the  House  of  Commons.  Hence  partly  came  the 
arbitrary  and  anomalous  distribution  of  borough  repre- 
sentation which  called  for  the  Reform  Bill  of  1832. 

The  present  constitution  of  the  House  of  Lords,  as  well 
as  the  creation  of  the  House  of  Commons,  is  traceable  to 
this  reign,  and  was  no  doubt  connected  with  Edward's 
general  policy  of  merging  feudal  distinctions  in  the 
nation.  Tenancy-in-chief,  as  a  title  to  a  seat,  was  super- 
seded by  the  king's  writ,  the  hereditary  right  of  the  peer 
to  which  was  at  the  same  time  established.  Thus  the 
House  of  Lords  became  what  it  now  remains,  a  House  of 
Peers  summoned  to  the  council  of  the  nation  by  heredi- 
tary right,  and  owing  their  original  creation  to  the 
crown.  It  is  an  aristocracy  of  hereditary  duty  and  privi- 
lege rather  than  of  birth.  For  mere  birth,  indeed,  there 
seems  in  the  times  of  the  first  Edward  to  have  been  com- 


174  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM 

paratively  little  regard.  One  of  the  king's  daughters 
married  a  commoner.  All  the  children  of  peers  have 
remained  commoners,  subject  to  the  common  law,  though 
distinguished  socially  by  titles  of  courtesy.  The  privi- 
lege of  trial  by  their  own  order  which  the  lords  have 
enjoyed  is  but  the  general  ordinance  of  the  Great  Charter 
that  every  man  should  be  tried  by  his  peers.  Through 
this  institution  of  the  writ  issued  to  the  hereditary  head 
of  the  house  alone,  England  escaped  a  noblesse,  the  curse 
of  France,  Germany,  and  Spain.  The  only  approach  to 
a  noblesse  was  the  exclusive  use  of  coats  of  arms  and  of 
crests  by  a  military  rather  than  a  noble  class,  with  the 
heraldry  and  the  College  of  Heralds  by  which  that  dis- 
tinction was  preserved.  The  king,  it  appears,  chose  the 
barons  who  were  to  receive  writs  as  he  chose  the  boroughs 
which  were  to  send  members,  so  that  he  was  the  creator 
of  the  House  of  Lords. 

In  the  plan  of  Edward's  national  assembly  the  clerical 
estate  was  included  with  the  other  two,  sending  its 
proctors  to  represent  it  as  the  counties  sent  their  knights, 
the  towns  their  burgesses.  But  it  shook  itself  free  ;  the 
clergy  preferred  to  be  an  estate  apart,  with  an  allegiance 
divided  between  the  king  and  the  pope,  taxing  themselves 
separately  if  they  were  to  be  taxed  at  all.  Thus  was 
born  the  clerical  Convocation,  with  its  two  houses,  one  of 
bishops,  the  other  of  the  lower  clergy,  which,  when  the 
order  lost  the  privilege  of  taxing  itself  and  became  sub- 
ject to  the  taxing  power  of  parliament,  sank  into  insig- 
nificance ;  the  result  being  a  political  ostracism  of  the 
clergy,  who  as  members  of  a  separate  estate  were  ex- 
cluded from  the  House  of  Commons.  Ecclesiastical 
interests,  however,  were  well  represented  by  the  bishops 


viii  EDWARD  I  176 

and  mitred  abbots  who  had  seats  in  the  House  of  Lords, 
not  as  heads  of  the  church,  but  as  great  feudatories  and 
counsellors  of  the  realm,  balancing  the  lay  element  in 
number.  Churchmen,  also,  thanks  to  their  superior  edu- 
cation, their  superior  aptitude  for  the  business  of  peace, 
and  their  greater  devotion  to  the  crown,  continued  to  be 
preferred  to  the  high  offices  of  state.  Thus  the  church 
had  her  full  share  of  power  and  was  kept  at  the  same 
time  in  political  union  Avith  the  realm.  The  arch-diocese 
of  York  having  asserted  its  independence  of  the  arch- 
diocese of  Canterbury,  each  had  its  own  convocation,  and 
the  severance  crippled  the  action  of  the  church. 

Outside  the  national  polity  still  were  the  peasantry  or 
serfs,  as  in  the  sequel  will  be  seen.  Nor  is  it  likely  that 
the  common  craftsmen  of  the  towns  would  be  allowed  by 
the  burgher  oligarchy  much  influence  in  elections.  Of 
these  unrepresented  classes,  it  should  be  remembered,  the 
king  was  still  the  only  protector. 

The  local  assemblies,  those  of  the  shire  and  the  bor- 
ough, in  which  the  members  of  the  House  of  Commons 
were  elected,  form  the  basis  of  the  system.  They  re- 
tained their  local  powers,  legislative  and  administrative, 
upon  an  improved  footing.  Thus  with  the  advantages 
of  centralization  were  combined  those  of  a  political  life 
diffused  through  the  whole  frame.  Parliament  at  first 
combined  the  representation  of  localities  with  that  of 
great  interests  or  estates.  As  its  power  grew  it  assumed 
more  of  the  character  of  a  common  council  of  the  whole 
nation. 

Government  and  the  direction  of  legislation  remained 
where  it  was  needful  they  should  be,  in  the  king. 
Edward,  in  the  partnership  between  him  and  the  nation, 


176  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CIIAI-. 

meant  to  be  the  predominant  partner.  Of  parliament 
in  its  infancy  the  rights  and  functions  were  undefined. 
The  commons  met  to  grant  supplies,  to  give  advice  to 
the  king,  to  inform  him  about  the  state  and  wants  of 
their  districts.  In  legislation  they  participated  at  first 
only  by  way  of  petition.  Their  power  of  granting  or 
withholding  supplies  in  time  gave  their  petitions  force. 
By  degrees  it  brought  them  general  control,  and  at  last 
the  supreme  power.  When  taxation  was  connected  with 
representation  and  with  liberty  of  giving  advice  or  de- 
manding redress,  the  foundation  of  the  constitution  had 
been  laid.  Of  the  judicial  power  vested  in  the  king  and 
his  council  of  barons  the  commons  received  no  share. 

At  the  same  time  another  authority,  also  national, 
was  taking  definite  shape,  that  of  the  king's  council,  the 
privy  council  as  it  was  afterwards  named,  consisting  of 
the  chosen  advisers  of  the  king.  This  had  begun  to 
acquire  importance  in  the  minority  of  Henry  III.;  in  the 
end  it  became  to  some  extent  a  regular  competitor  with 
parliament  even  for  legislative  power. 

Edward's  policy  on  military  questions  was  connected 
with  his  general  policy  of  putting  nationality  in  place  of 
feudalism.  The  feudal  array  of  barons  bound  to  service 
for  forty  days  and  bringing  their  own  retainers  into  the 
field,  he  did  not  abolish.  But  by  the  statute  of  Win- 
chester he  infused  new  vigour  into  the  organization  of 
the  national  militia,  the  old  fyrd  called  out  by  the  crown 
through  the  sheriff,  and  under  the  direct  command  of  the 
king.  He  enforced  the  assize  of  arms,  requiring  every 
freeman  to  be  armed  according  to  his  means.  His  tactics, 
which  combined  the  action  of  the  yeoman  archer  with  the 
feudal  horseman,  tended  in  the  same  direction.  Distraint 


vin  EDWAKD  I  177 

of  knighthood,  whereby  each  holder  of  a  certain  number 
of  acres,  no  matter  by  what  tenure,  was  compelled  to  put 
a  mailed  horseman  into  the  field,  also  had  a  tendency  to 
the  creation  of  a  national  army  in  place  of  a  feudal  array. 
Even  the  improvement  of  the  navy  for  the  protection  of 
the  coast  would,  besides  its  direct  object,  contribute  to 
the  creation  of  a  force  eminently  national,  the  destined 
bulwark  and  glory  of  the  nation.  Of  mercenaries,  under 
a  patriotic  king,  we  hear  no  more. 

To  curb  the  local  powers  of  lords  of  manors,  and  bring 
all  jurisdictions  under  that  of  the  royal  and  national 
courts,  went  forth  a  commission  of  Quo  Warranto,  calling  1280 
upon  feudal  lords  to  produce  their  titles.  Then  feudal- 
ism showed  its  teeth.  Earl  Warrenne  produced  to  the 
commission  as  his  title  a  rusty  sword,  by  which,  he  said, 
his  ancestors  had  won,  and  he  meant  to  keep,  his  rights. 
Earl  Warrenne's  pedigree  as  heir  of  a  Norman  conqueror 
would  hardly  have  borne  inspection,  and  the  sword  of 
'Norman  conquest  was  by  this  time  rusty  indeed. 

The  general  policy  seems  to  have  pervaded  the  statute  1288 
Quia  JUmptores,  regulating  subinfeudation.  It  was  en- 
acted that  upon  the  alienation  of  a  feudal  estate  the 
dues  and  services  of  the  purchaser  should  go  not  to  the 
alienor,  but  to  the  original  grantor  or  lord  paramount ; 
the  effect  of  which  would  be  to  multiply  tenancies-in- 
chief,  and  place  more  of  the  holders  of  land  directly 
u<ider  the  crown.  It  is  not  so  easy  to  connect  with  the 
general  policy  the  statute  De  Donis  Conditionatibus  guard-  1285 
ing  against  alienation  of  estates  tail,  which  are  the  basis 
of  a  hereditary  nobility,  unless  it  were  that  the  preserva- 
tion of  the  reversionary  rights  of  the  donor  was  deemed 
to  be  in  the  interest  of  the  crown. 

VOL.    I 12 


178  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

That  Edward  did  not  all  this  alone  but  had  able 
men  to  assist  him  we  may  be  sure,  and  in  regard  to  his 
legal  improvements  are  expressly  informed.  But  the 
men  were  his  choice,  and  the  paramount  purpose  of  super- 
seding feudalism  by  nationality  under  a  patriot  king  which 
pervades  the  whole  policy  of  the  reign,  bespeaks  the  action 
of  a  single  mind. 

In  extending  the  policy  of  nationalization  to  the 
church  and  making  it  an  estate  of  the  realm,  liable  to 
the  national  burdens,  the  king's  way  would  be  paved  by 
the  unpopularity  which  the  papacy  had  contracted  during 
his  father's  reign  as  an  alien  power  of  extortion  ;  as  well 
as  by  the  diminished  respect  for  the  clerical  and  monastic 
orders,  the  growing  jealousy  of  their  privileges,  and  the 
increasing  impatience  of  papal  exactions  which  the  people 
were  beginning  to  betray.  Grosseteste  and  Twenge  had 
been  pioneers  of  nationality  as  well  as  of  reform. 

The  clerical  estate  as  well  as  the  feudal  baronage  was 
to  be  taught  its  place  and  its  duty  to  the  nation.  Edward* 
was  religious,  fully  believed  in  the  pope  as  the  father  of 
Christendom  holding  the  keys  of  heaven  and  hell,  and 
respected  the  spiritual  jurisdiction.  But  he  was  not,  like 
his  father,  superstitious.  When  his  mother  told  him  that 
a  blind  man  had  been  miraculously  restored  to  sight  at 
his  father's  tomb,  his  answer  was  that  his  father  would 
have  been  more  likely  to  put  out  the  vagabond's  eyes 
than  to  restore  them.  He  could  rebuke  the  pope  himself 
for  setting  Christian  princes  by  the  ears  instead  of  unit- 
ing them  in  the  cause  of  Christendom.  Like  St.  Louis, 
he  showed  a  firm  front  to  papal  encroachment,  and  per- 
haps in  both  cases  resolution  might  spring  from  the  dis- 
cerning confidence  of  sincere  religion.  Papal  pretension 


via  EDWARD  I  179 

still  towered  high.  It  towered  highest,  its  language  did 
at  least,  in  Pope  Boniface  VIII.  on  the  eve  of  a  headlong 
fall.  Popes  were  usurping  by  different  devices  the  nomi- 
nation of  archbishops  of  Canterbury,  and  would  fain  have 
usurped  those  of  the  suffragan  bishops  also.  In  virtue  of 
John's  surrender,  they  deemed  themselves  still  sovereigns 
of  England  ;  and  the  crown,  sharing  with  them  the  spoils 
of  the  English  church,  was  too  ready  to  connive  at  their 
encroachment.  Through  three  archbishops  in  succession, 
of  whom  the  first  two  were  papal  nominees,  the  papacy 
strove  to  dominate  in  England.  Kilwardby,  a  Dominican 
friar,  the  first  member  of  a  mendicant  order  who  held  a 
place  hardly  compatible  with  the  vow  of  poverty,  and  a 
scholastic  divine  of  eminence,  proved  too  weak  for  his 
patron's  purpose ;  he  was  made  a  cardinal  and  recalled  to  1278 
Rome.  His  successor,  Peckham,  a  Franciscan  and  an  1279 
ascetic,  who  kept  six  Lents  in  each  year,  set  out  with  the 
aspiration  of  playing  Becket.  As  soon  as  he  landed  in 
England,  he  held  a  synod  at  which  he  assumed  an 
aggressive  attitude  towards  the  state,  and,  as  a  manifesto 
of  the  church's  claim  to  her  privileges,  ordered  copies  of 
the  Great  Charter  to  be  hung  up  in  churches.  Edward, 
backed  by  parliament,  made  him  take  them  down  again 
and  apologize  for  his  intervention  in  secular  affairs.  It 
was  time  likewise  to  put  a  limit  to  the  absorption  of  land 
by  the  church,  who,  always  taking  and  never  giving  back, 
would  have  engrossed  the  wealth  of  the  kingdom,  herself 
at  the  same  time  growing  plethoric  and  unfit  for  her 
spiritual  functions.  The  statute  of  Mortmain  prohibited  1279 
all  grants  of  land  to  ecclesiastical  corporations  without  a 
royal  license  under  pain  of  forfeiture  to  the  lord  of  the 
fief.  By  the  ingenuity  of  ecclesiastical  lawyers  attempts 


180  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAI>. 

were  made  to  elude  the  statute,  but  the  legislature  chased 
evasion  through  these  devices,  and  henceforth  no  land 
could  be  acquired  by  an  ecclesiastical  corporation  with- 
out a  license  in  mortmain  from  the  crown.  An  attempt 
to  extend  the  jurisdiction  of  the  church  courts  over 
ecclesiastical  patronage  and  the  personal  property  of 
clergymen  brought  on  another  collision  which  ended  in 
the  limitation  of  ecclesiastical  jurisdiction  by  the  statute 
1285  or  ordinance  of  Circumspecte  Agatis.  Church  courts, 
though  they  affected  to  deal  with  spiritual  cases  in  a 
spiritual  way,  became  not  less  secular  in  their  methods 
than  the  lay  courts ;  not  less  vexatious  and  costly  to  the 
suitor ;  not  less  liable  to  technical  iniquity  and  chicane. 
Henceforth  the  ecclesiastical  courts  were  to  hold  pleas  only 
on  matters  spiritual,  offences  for  which  penance  was  due, 
tithes,  mortuaries  or  death  dues,  churches  and  church- 
yards, injuries  done  to  clerks,  perjury  and  defamation. 
Peckham  helped  the  king  by  quarrelling  with  his  own 
suffragans,  and  by  persecuting  the  saint  and  patriot 
Thomas  Cantelupe,  Bishop  of  Hereford,  the  friend  of 
De  Montfort,  for  whom  Edward,  to  prove  his  liberal  senti- 
ments, sought  the  honour  of  canonization.  But  the  tug 
of  war  came  with  Winchelsey,  a  prelate  full  of  the  spirit 
of  his  master,  Pope  Boniface,  who  proclaimed  himself  set 
by  God  over  all  kings  and  kingdoms.  Edward,  pressed 
by  necessities  of  state,  demanded  a  contribution  from  the 
clergy.  The  pope  had  launched  a  Bull  forbidding  the 
clergy  to  pay  any  taxes  to  the  lay  power.  The  high 
church  theory  was  that  the  clergy  in  .every  realm,  with 
their  property,  were  a  province  apart,  belonging  to  the 
dominion  of  the  pope  ;  that  national  law  was  the  church's 
trustee,  national  government  her  executioner.  The  lay 


vin  EDWAKD  I  181 

power,  however,  in  the  person  of  Edward  met  the  pre- 
tension of  the  clergy  to  be  beyond  the  domain  of  secular 
government  in  a  logical  way  by  putting  them  out  of  the 
pale  of  law.  The  primate's  courage,  when  he  was  thus  1296 
confronted,  failed  him.  He  allowed  his  clergy  to  pay, 
and  whatever  might  be  their  theory,  they  never  again 
practically  refused  to  share  the  burdens  of  the  state. 
The  principle  had  been  established  that  "the  church  in 
England  was  not  a  dominion  apart,  but  an  estate  of  the 
English  realm,  though  with  a  spiritual  head  at  Rome. 
Thus  the  ecclesiastical  polity  of  England  before  the  con- 
quest was  almost  restored.  Edward  bore  himself  through 
the  struggle  with  decency,  showing  nothing  of  the  vio- 
lence of  Rufus. 

This  is  a  memorable  era  in  the  history  of  law.  What 
had  been  begun  in  England  under  Henry  II.  is  greatly 
advanced  now.  From  mere  recognition  and  declaration 
of  custom,  or  occasional  edicts  of  kings,  we  have  passed 
to  legislation  in  the  proper  sense  of  the  term ;  we  come  to 
a  higher  stage  of  civilization,  life  under  fixed  law.  In 
France  we  have  the  Establissements  of  St.  Louis ;  in 
Spain,  the  Siete  Partidas  of  Alphonso  the  Wise  ;  in  the 
kingdom  of  the  Sicilies,  Frederick  II.  and  his  minister, 
Peter  De  Vineis,  have  codified  the  Norman  law.  If  the 
baronage  of  England  repelled  the  Roman  law,  instinct  as 
it  was  with  imperialism,  her  jurists  had  profited  by 
its  science.  It  is  by  Coke,  the  author  of  the  Insti- 
tutes, that  Edward  I.  is  called  the  English  Justinian.  In 
importance  as  a  law-giver  he  may  deserve  the  name, 
though  in  spirit  he  was  far  different  from  the  Byzantine 
autocrat.  His  Tribonian  was  his  chancellor,  Burnell, 
unlike  his  master  in  character  if  he  was  licentious  and 


182  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

covetous,  but  faithful  as  a  public  servant,  and  master  of 
his  craft.  Edward  had  also  at  his  side  Francisco  Accursi, 
son  of  the  great  Italian  jurist.  His  own  judges  would 
give  him  the  common  law.  "  Never,"  says  Sir  Matthew 
Hale,  "  did  the  laws  in  any  one  age  receive  so  great  and 
sudden  advancement."  Not  all  the  ages  since,  he  avers, 
have  done  so  much  in  settling  the  justice  of  the  kingdom 
as  was  done  in"  the  short  compass  of  this  reign.  Black- 
stone  concludes  an  imposing  catalogue  of  Edward's  legal 
reforms  and  improvements  by  observing  that  "  the  very 
scheme  and  model  of  the  administration  of  common  jus- 
tice between  party  and  party  was  settled  by  this  king." 
From  this  epoch  legal  precedent  runs.  Whatever  Accursi 
may  have  contributed  in  the  way  of  form,  in  substance 
the  law  of  England  remained  English  and  not  Roman. 
The  common  law  held  its  ground  and  remained  a 
strong  though  uncouth  bulwark  of  personal  right  and 
liberty.  What  it  had  received  into  itself  of  Roman  law 
seems  to  have  operated  as  a  sort  of  vaccination. 

With  the  improvement  in  the  law  went  improvements 
in  the  judiciary.  More  regularity  was  given  to  the  cir- 
1285  cuits  of  the  justices  in  eyre,  and  their  office  was  made 
more  properly  judicial  and  less  fiscal.  In  the  fiscal  part 
of  their  office  as  collectors  of  crown  revenue  by  the  exac- 
tion of  dues  and  fines  they  had  brought  on  themselves  the 
suspicion  of  the  people.  Like  other  rulers  in  those  times, 
Edward  had  to  contend  with  corruption  in  his  judges,  his 
sheriffs,  and  all  officers  who  handled  money. 

Now  also  a  lasting  form  was  given  to  the  set  of  legal 
writs  which  will  henceforth  be  the  basis  of  common  law 
procedure  and  learning.  Now  is  born  a  professional  bar, 
with  promotion  from  the  bar  to  the  bench,  and  ecclesias- 


vni  EDWARD   I  183 

tics  are  succeeded  as  judges  by  laymen  learned  in  the 
law. 

The  statute  of  Merchants  shows  the  king's  anxiety  to  1283, 

1285 
foster  commerce,  which  besides  adding  to  the  wealth  of 

his  kingdom  was  more  friendly  to  the  power  of  whose 
protection  it  stood  in  need,  and  was  less  impatient  of  fiscal 
exaction  than  the  landed  interest  with  the  jealous  baron- 
age at  its  head.  Here  again  we  see  the  all-pervading 
policy  of  taking  the  great  interests  into  the  hands  of 
the  central  government.  Protection  very  liberal  for  the 
age  is  extended  to  the  foreign  merchant.  The  clause 
giving  to  creditors  a  lien  on  the  debtor's  land  as  well 
as  on  his  personalty,  bespeaks  the  growing  strength  of 
the  commercial  interest,  and  shows  that  the  character 
of  land-ownership  was  becoming  less  feudal  and  more 
commercial. 

The  process  of  development  by  which  the  judicial  was 
separated  from  the  legislative  and  administrative  power 
was  now  nearly  complete,  though  the  king  remained  con- 
stitutionally supreme  judge  as  well  as  ruler,  justice 
being  administered  in  his  name  and  in  his  conventional 
presence,  as  indeed  it  is  in  the  present  day.  The  three 
courts  of  king's  bench,  common  pleas,  and  exchequer,  the 
first  for  causes  between  the  crown  and  the  subject,  the 
second  for  causes  between  subject  and  subject,  the  third 
for  fiscal  causes,  exist  as  they  continued  to  exist  till  yester- 
day. All  the  three  courts  administer  the  common  law, 
that  is,  the  customs  of  the  realm  as  modified  by  statute, 
the  custom  being  in  the  breast  of  the  judge.  In  the  king 
personally  is  still  left  a  general  power  of  grace  and  of 
equitable  intervention.  This  is  exercised  through  the 
chancellor,  who  is  said  to  keep  the  king's  conscience. 


184  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

The  chancellor's  office  had  originally  been  that  of  royal 
secretary  of  all  departments,  that  of  the  household  as 
well  as  those  of  home  and  foreign  affairs,  conducting 
the  king's  correspondence  and  keeping  the  king's  seal. 
It  now  becomes  that  of  a  supreme  judge  in  equity,  and 
when  it  has  taken  complete  form  as  the  court  of  chancery, 
will  supply  the  shortcomings,  enlarge  the  narrowness,  and 
temper  the  rigidity  of  the  common  law.  The  chancellor 
still  retains  his  function  as  secretary  of  state,  and  is 
in  effect  chief  minister  from  this  time,  while  the  grand 
justiciar  disappears.  He  is  an  ecclesiastic,  and  his 
authority  adds  to  the  influence  of  his  order.  The  Chief 
Justice  of  England,  with  his  golden  chain,  has  preserved 
something  of  the  justiciar.  The  title  of  barons  of  the 
exchequer  recalled  the  time  when  the  court  was  a  com- 
mittee of  the  Curia  Regis  dealing  with  finance. 

Disorder  still  called  for  repression  when  Edward  came  to 
the  throne.  More  than  once  he  had  to  show  his  vigour  in 
restraining  nobles  from  private  war.  A  marauder  fired 
and  pillaged  Boston  when  it  was  holding  one  of  those  fairs 
which  were  the  life  of  the  home  trade  in  the  England  of  that 
day.  The  roads  were  infested  by  robbers  who  lurked  in 
the  adjoining  woods.  That  the  merchant  might  carry  his 
goods  safely  from  fair  to  fair  it  was  ordained  that  the  sides 
of  the  road  should  be  cleared.  A  commission  of  Trailbas- 
1305  ton  was  directed  against  violence  in  general,  and  local 
guardianship  of  the  peace  was  made  more  efficient  by  an 
improvement  of  the  system  of  watch  and  ward,  and  by 
an  advance  towards  the  establishment  of  justices  of  the 
peace.  The  system  of  mutual  responsibility  or  frank 
pledge,  a  rude  expedient  of  primitive  times,  is  practically 
numbered  with  the  past.  Always  in  judging  a  king's 


vin  EDWARD   I  185 

policy  we  must  bear  in  mind  the  rough  and  wild  material 
with  which  he  had  to  deal. 

Another  reform,  as  it  was  deemed,  in  spite  of  its  cruelty,  1290 
by  the  king  and  by  the  people,  was  the  banishment  of  the 
Jews.  The  motive  was  partly  religious,  but  it  was  mainly 
hatred  of  Jewish  extortion  and  of  alien  domination.  The 
Jews  had  not  only  practised  grinding  usury,  but  had  been 
getting  the  land  into  their  grasp  by  mortgage  in  collu- 
sion with  greedy  land-owners,  who  thus  annexed  the  hold- 
ings of  their  weaker  neighbours.  From  this  Jews  were 
debarred  by  an  ordinance  restricting  their  tenure  of  land. 
Some  of  them  seem  to  have  betaken  themselves  to  clipping 
the  coin,  for  which  offence  a  number  suffered.  Popular 
feeling  against  them  was  enhanced  by  their  ostentation  of 
wealth.  They  had  been  admonished  to  betake  themselves 
to  less  odious  trades,  but  of  course  without  effect.  In 
banishing  them  the  king  sacrificed  a  rich  though  hateful 
source  of  revenue.  At  their  departure  the  wrath  of  the 
people  broke  forth  cruelly  against  the  hapless  race,  but  it 
was  repressed  by  the  king.  That  the  Jewish  money- 
lenders and  financiers  took  away  with  them  the  commer- 
cial prosperity  of  the  kingdom  is  shown  by  the  subsequent 
history  to  be  untrue.  In  maritime  enterprise  the  Jews 
could  bear  no  part,  except  as  they  might  furnish  funds. 
Churches,  abbeys,  colleges,  and  other  public  edifices,  for 
which  they  are  alleged  alone  to  have  provided  the  capital, 
continued  to  be  built  after  their  departure.  That  the 
Italian  financier  came  in  place  of  the  Hebrew  and  reaped 
a  measure  of  the  same  hatred  is  true ;  but  he  did  not 
threaten  England  with  the  perpetual  ascendancy  of  an 
alien  and  unassociable  race.  The  nation  showed  its  grati- 
tude by  a  liberal  grant. 


186  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

With  a  policy  always  tending  to  the  dethronement  of 
feudalism  and  the  installation  of  a  national  monarchy, 
Edward  could  not  fail  to  arouse  the  opposition  of  the 
feudal  magnates.  At  last  they  had  him  at  a  disadvan- 
tage, and  were  able  to  combine  the  show  at  least  of 
regard  for  public  right  and  patriotism  with  the  interest 
of  their  class.  He  had  always  been  in  financial  straits, 
having  inherited  an  empty  treasury,  and  being  involved 
in  costly  wars.  Yet  in  the  first  eighteen  years  of  his 
reign  he  had  only  four  times  come  upon  his  people  for 
extraordinary  grants.  But  the  double  expenditure  of 
a  war  in  Scotland  and  a  war  on  the  continent  for  the 
defence  of  Gascony  against  Philip  of  France  reduced  him 
to  the  extremity  of  need,  and  drove  him  to  desperate 
courses.  He  tallaged  the  domains  of  the  crown,  for 
doing  which,  it  seems,  he  had  the  letter  of  legal  right ; 
he  laid  his  hands  upon  the  stores  of  wool,  hides,  and 
other  merchandise  ;  he  seized  the  treasures  of  the  cathe- 
drals and  monasteries ;  he  wrung  contributions  from  the 
clergy.  An  opposition  which  nearly  took  the  form  of 
armed  rebellion  arose.  At  its  head  were  the  two  chiefs 
of  the  feudal  nobility,  Roger  Bigod,  Earl  of  Norfolk  and 
Earl  Marshal,  and  Humphrey  De  Bohun,  Earl  of  Here- 
ford and  High  Constable.  They  had  a  confederate  in 
Archbishop  Winchelsey,  who  was  fighting  for  the  immu- 
nities of  his  order.  Bigod  and  Bohun  figure  in  Whig 
histories  as  patriots,  and  as  objects  of  constitutional 
gratitude.  Both  of  them  had  personal  grudges,  Bohun 
having  been  fined  and  imprisoned,  Bigod  having  been 
put  down  in  attempting  to  levy  private  war.  Their 
patriotism  is  somewhat  doubtful,  bvit  in  resisting  arbitrary 
taxation  they  had  right  upon  their  side.  The  first  con- 


vni  EDWARD   I  187 

flict  arose  from  the  refusal  of  the  Constable  and  Marshal 
to  serve  abroad  without  the  king.  "By  God,  Sir  Earl  !  "  1297 
said  the  king  to  the  Earl  Marshal,  at  the  end  of  the 
altercation,  "you  shall  either  go  or  hang."  "By  the 
same  oath,  Sir  King,  I  will  neither  go  nor  hang,"  was 
the  Marshal's  reply.  The  field  of  quarrel  widening,  the 
earls  raised  a  body  of  horse  and  forcibly  stopped  the 
seizure  of  wool  and  hides.  Popular  feeling  began  to 
show  itself  on  their  side.  The  king  addressed  a  touch- 
ing speech  to  the  people  outside  the  hall  at  Westminster, 
telling  them  that  for  their  sakes  he  was -going  to  meet 
danger,  promising  them,  if  he  returned,  to  make  amends 
to  them  for  all,  and  bidding  them,  if  he  fell,  take  his  son 
as  king.  The  heart  of  the  people  responded  to  the 
appeal.  But  when  the  king  had  embarked  for  Flanders, 
and  his  dreaded  presence  was  withdrawn,  the  two  earls 
and  the  archbishop,  with  their  party,  renewed  their  pres- 
sure and  forced  the  regency  to  give  way.  The  king  was  1297 
constrained  to  grant  a  confirmation  of  the  Great  Charter, 
with  an  extension  renouncing  tallage,  prise  of  merchan- 
dise, and  arbitrary  taxation  of  every  kind.  This  memo- 
rable enactment,  commonly  known  as  the  statute  De 
Tallagio  non  Concedendo,  in  principle  completed  the 
groundwork  of  the  constitution.  To  it  was  appended  a 
provision  for  a  new  perambulation  of  the  forests,  forest 
encroachments  being  still  a  standing  grievance.  Edward 
was  passionately  fond  of  hunting,  but  he  seems  also  to 
have  felt  that  the  flower  of  his  prerogative  was  touched. 
He  fenced  with  the  demand,  and  when  he  at  last  frankly 
consented,  he  sought  a  dispensation  of  the  pope.  This 
act,  at  variance  with  the  motto  of  his  life,  was  Edward's 
fall,  and  is  to  be  palliated  only  by  the  general  error  of 


188  THE   UNITED  KINGDOM  CHAP. 

his  age,  which  believed  that  conscience  could  be  bound 
and  loosed  by  popes.  He  did  not  act  on.  the  dispensa- 
tion. The  opposition  would  have  gone  further.  They 
wanted  to  take  from  the  king  the  appointment  of  the 
officers  of  state.  Edward  replied  that  complaints  against 
any  of  his  officers  should  be  heard,  but  that  if  he  gave  up 
the  appointments  he  would  no  more  be  king.  Through- 
out the  controversy  he  showed  his  sense  of  the  true 
foundation  of  his  power  by  throwing  himself  on  the 
affection  of  his  people. 

Luckily  for. the  king,  there  was  a  split  between  the 
lay  opposition  headed  by  the  earls,  and  the  clerical  op- 
position headed  by  Archbishop  Winchelsey,  a  politician 
whose  strategy  seems  to  have  verged  on  treason ;  for 
there  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  papal  missive  forbid- 
ding Edward  to  make  war  on  the  Scotch,  of  which  the 
archbishop  was  the  officious  bearer,  had  its  origin  in  his 
own  brain.  To  the  missive  he  added  words  of  ghostly 
counsel,  telling  the  king  how  safe  were  the  dwellers  in 
Jerusalem,  and  how  they  who  trusted  in  God  were  as 
Mount  Sion.  "  By  God's  blood,"  thundered  the  pious 
monarch,  "  I  will  not  hold  my  tongue  for  Sion,  nor  keep 
silent  for  Jerusalem ;  but  my  right,  which  is  known  to 
all  men,  I  will  with  my  whole  might  defend  !  "  On  a 
question  of  national  independence  the  baronage  was  with 
the  king,  and  a  ringing  protest  against  interference  was 
the  answer  to  the  pope.  Edward  seems  to  have  sus- 
pected that  the  plots  of  the  archbishop  had  been  deeper 
still.  He  openly  upbraided  him  with  his  treason,  telling 
him  that  there  were  proofs  of  it  under  his  own  hand,  and 
that  he  might  go,  but  should  never  return.  The  arch- 
bishop went,  and  during  Edward's  life  he  did  not  return. 


viii  EDWARD   I  189 

To  promote,  by  all  fair  means,  the  union  of  the 
island  as  the  only  sure  guarantee  for  its  internal  peace 
and  external  security  was  a  policy  which,  after  long  and 
dire  experience  of  its  opposite,  received  in  the  case  of 
England  and  Scotland  a  glorious  ratification  in  1707. 
Edward  pursued  it  with  law  and  right  clearly  on  his 
side  in  the  case  of  Wales ;  with  law  and  right  less  clearly 
on  his  side  in  the  case  of  Scotland ;  yet  in  his  own  way 
and  with  an  object  widely  different  from  those  of  the 
conquerors  whose  selfish  and  unscrupulous  ambition  has 
been  the  curse  of  mankind.  He  has  been  accused,  per- 
haps with  justice,  in  this  and  other  cases,  of  being  ex- 
treme in  insisting  on  the  letter  of  his  legal  right.  If  he 
was,  he  erred  with  an  age  of  feudal  and  papal  reasoning ; 
but  it  remains  to  be  shown  that  in  his  British  policy  he 
was  not  justified  in  believing  that  he  had  at  least,  besides 
the  letter  of  the  law,  the  true  interest  of  the  whole  island 
on  his  side. 

From  Cheshire,  made  by  the  Conqueror  a  palatinate 
that  its  earl  might  have  force  to  curb  the  Welsh,  and 
from  the  southwestern  counties,  Norman  conquest,  the 
way  being  opened  for  it  by  the  clan  feuds  of  Welsh  chief- 
tains, had  pushed  on  into  Wales,  occupied  the  lowlands, 
and  made  of  them  Marches,  petty  feudal  principalities  of 
which  the  Marcher  was  the  feudal  lord.  In  Pembroke- 
shire, Henry  I.  had  planted  as  an  outpost  a  colony  of 
Flemings.  The  mountain  region,  with  the  island  of 
Anglesey  in  its  rear,  had  nominally  submitted  to  the 
kings  of  England,  and  its  native  princes  owed  them 
fealty.  But  it  remained  the  home  and  fastness  of  the 
Celt,  with  the  Celtic  language  to  which  he  still  clings, 
with  his  native  prince,  with  his  clannish  instincts,  with 


190  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

the  lawlessness  tempered  by  custom  which  he  called  the 
laws  of  Howell  the  Good,  with  his  fantastic  legends,  with 
his  fond  memories  stretching  back  through  ages  of  depres- 
sion and  isolation  to  the  time  when  all  Britain  was  Celtic 
and  to  the  fabled  glories  of  Arthur,  with  his  love  of  the 
bard  and  the  harp,  with  the  plaintive  poetry  of  an  emo- 
tional, imaginative,  and  vanquished  race.  Never  did  the 
Welsh  mountaineer  lose  a  chance  of  fomenting  English 
troubles  or  of  backing  English  rebellion.  Under  John 
and  under  Henry  III.  we  saw  him  active  on  the  insurgent 
side.  In  this  way  he  had  preserved  a  relic  of  marauding 
independence.  He  had  played  his  usual  part  in  the  civil 
commotions  of  the  last  reign.  As  there  was  nothing  for 
it  but  to  give  the  marchers  a  free  hand,  in  the  marches 
also  disorder  reigned.  This  state  of  things  could  not 
be  borne.  A  conqueror,  even  the  least  unscrupulous, 
would  have  laid  a  strong  hand  on  Wales ;  a  pretext  the 
Welsh  forays  would  soon  have  afforded  him,  and  he 
would  have  been  absolved  by  history.  Edward  was  not 
a  conqueror,  he  was  a  strict  respecter  of  law,  though  he 
might  sometimes  read  law  narrowly  and  sometimes  in  the 
light  of  policy.  In  the  case  of  Wales  he  had  the  law 
clearly  on  his  side.  Llewelyn,  the  Welsh  prince,  owing 
fealty  and  not  denying  that  he  owed  it,  made  default, 
was  contumacious,  and  put  himself  in  an  attitude  of 
1277  rebellion.  Edward,  with  the  concurrence  of  the  English 
estates,  led  an  army  against  him.  Llewelyn  deemed 
himself  unassailable  in  his  mountains,  where  the  mailed 
cavalry  was  ineffective  and  had  more  than  once  met  with 
disaster.  But  Edward,  acting  on  the  principle  that  the 
valleys  command  the  hills,  girdled  the  insurgent  region 
with  castles  and  turned  invasion  into  investment,  while 


VIH  EDWARD   I  191 

the  Cinque  Port  fleet  took  Anglesey.  Llewelyn  sur-  1277 
rendered,  ceded  a  part  of  his  territory,  in  the  possession 
of  a  greater  part  of  it  was  confirmed  on  condition  of 
a  payment  which  was  afterwards  remitted  and  of  send- 
ing hostages  who  were  afterwards  returned.  His  brother 
David,  who,  meaning  probably  to  supplant  him,  had 
taken  the  English  side,  was  rewarded  with  lands  and 
castles,  knighthood,  and  Earl  Derby's  daughter  as  a 
wife.  Llewelyn  did  homage,  spent  Christmas  with  the 
king,  and  received  the  hand  of  Edward's  cousin,  Eleanor 
De  Montfort.  Hopeless  now  of  supplanting  his  brother, 
David  urged  him  to  revolt.  The  pair  broke  into  sudden 
rebellion  against  Edward,  slew  his  people,  surprised  his 
castles,  and  carried  away  his  governor.  War  began  anew  1282 
and  it  was  arduous  and  costly.  But  Llewelyn  was  slain 
in  a  chance  affray,  and  his  head  was  brought  to  Edward. 
David,  a  double  traitor,  was  given  up  by  the  Welsh,  and, 
after  solemn  trial  in  the  presence  of  a  parliament,  died 
a  traitor's  death.  Wales  was  subdued.  Its  two-fold  1284 
palladium,  Arthur's  crown  and  the  piece  of  the  true  cross, 
came  into  the  victor's  hands.  But  the  mountain  tribe, 
whether  in  Wales  or  in  Afghanistan,  does  not  easily 
resign  its  lawless  freedom.  Renewed  risings  called  on 
Edward  for  fresh  efforts.  Additions  were  made  to  the 
girdle  of  castles,  some  of  which  still  in  their  ruins  attest 
the  grandeur  and  generalship  of  their  founder.  A  set  of 
rules  was  framed  for  the  government  of  the  principality 
introducing  the  criminal  law  and  some  parts  of  the 
administrative  machinery  of  England.  Whatever  seemed 
tolerable  in  the  Welsh  customs,  Edward,  with  true  states- 
manship, determined  to  preserve.  That  he  extirpated 
the  bards,  as  Hume  said  and  Gray  sang,  is  a  romantic 


192  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

fiction;  their  minstrelsy  abounds  after  this  time.  A 
Round  Table,  held  at  Carnarvon  with  high  state  and 
a  large  concourse,  celebrated  that  which,  however  we 
may  feel  for  conquered  races,  must  be  deemed  a  triumph 
of  peace,  order,  and  civilization.  To  win  the  people  to 
industry,  mining  was  encouraged.  Wales,  however, 
though  annexed  and  partly  assimilated,  was  not  at  this 
time  nor  till  long  afterwards  fully  incorporated  with 
England.  It  did  not  send  members  to  the  English  par- 
liament. The  mountain  region  retained  its  political 
seclusion.  The  Welsh  language  lived,  and  with  it  some- 
thing of  a  separate  nationality,  as  was  seen  a  century 

1400-  later  in  the  insurrection  of  Owen  Glendower,  as  is  seen 
'   in  the  separatist  tendencies  of  Wales,  civil  and  religious, 
even  at  the  present  day. 

In  the  case  of  Wales  Edward  had  succeeded.  In  the 
case  of  Scotland  fortune  was  adverse  ;  yet  he  did  not 
fail,  but  was  prevented  by  death  from  completing  his 
work,  which  was  wrecked  by  the  weakness  of  his  suc- 
cessor. It  was  a  great  calamity  to  him,  and,  perhaps, 
to  those  with  whom  he  had  to  deal,  and  to  whom  his 
temper  was  important,  that  in  this  critical  hour,  when 
the  hardest  trials  of  his  life  lay  before  him,  he  lost  his 
wife.  "  I  loved  her  living,  and  I  love  her  dead,"  he 
said,  as  he  ordained  perpetual  masses,  little  needed,  for 

1-290  her  soul.  From  Lincoln,  near  which  she  died,  he  bore 
her  corpse  to  Westminster,  and  at  each  place  where  it 
rested,  a  cross,  the  work  of  medieval  art  in  the  zenith 
of  its  beauty,  rose  to  mark  the  path  along  which  the  great 
king,  turning  from  his  course  of  war  and  statesman- 
ship, followed  the  bier  of  love.  If  there  is  a  character 
in  history  answering  to  Tennyson's  King  Arthur,  it 


vin      4  EDWARD   I  193 

is    that    of    Edward     I.,     while    his    Eleanor    was    no 
Guinevere. 

Scotland  was  not  a  united  kingdom.  The  people  of 
the  Lowlands  were  English,  more  purely  English  than 
the  people  of  England  itself,  and  had  been  severed  from 
their  stock  only  by  the  accident  of  the  Norman  Conquest. 
Normans  had  come  among  them,  not  as  conquerors,  but 
as  adventurers  ;  had  gained  ascendancy  at  the  Scottish 
court  and  over  the  country  ;  had  introduced  their  cus- 
toms, and  had  turned  Lowland  Scotland  into  a  rough 
counterpart  of  feudal  England.  The  Norman  nobilities 
of  the  two  countries  were  in  fact  one.  Bruce,  Baliol, 
and  Comyn  held  English  as  well  as  Scottish  fiefs.  Sev- 
eral Scotch  lords,  among  them  Baliol  and  Bruce,  were 
with  Henry  III.  at  Lewes.  A  Bruce  and  a  Baliol  had 
fought  for  England  against  Scotland  in  the  battle  of 
the  Standard.  But  the  authority  of  the  Lowland  king 
ended  with  the  Grampians.  Behind  that  rampart  still 
dwelt,  in  his  Highland  fastness,  the  Celt,  with  his  own 
language  and  customs  ;  with  his  group  of  clans,  whose 
separate  unities  the  glens  had  preserved,  owing  no  alle- 
giance but  to  the  clan  chief  ;  thoroughly  alien  and  hostile 
to  the  Saxon,  who  had  dispossessed  him  of  the  plain,  and 
upon  whom  he  deemed  it  meritorious  to  raid.  Beyond 
the  Highland  clans,  again,  in  the  isles,  were  Norsemen, 
alien  alike  to  Celt  and  Saxon,  with  habits  like  those  of 
their  ancestors  maritime  and  largely  piratical,  under  their 
own  laws  or  lawlessness.  The  Celtic  Highlander  and 
the  Islander  might  have  as  much  right  to  the  independence 
for  which  they  struggled  against  the  Lowlander  as  the 
Lowlander  had  to  his  own.  To  an  anarchical  and  pre- 
datory independence  none  of  them  could  have  a  right. 


194  .  THE   UNITED  KINGDOM  „  CHAI>. 

Several  times  the  Scotch  had  invaded  England,  and  there 
was  always  danger  of  their  inroads. 

Edward  had  been  sixteen  years  on  the  throne  without 
touching  the  affairs  of  Scotland.  Alexander  III.,  king 
of  Scotland,  died,  leaving  as  his  heiress  an  infant,  the 
child  of  his  daughter  Margaret,  by  the  king  of  Norway. 

1290  Trouble  at  once  arose  among  the  turbulent  baronage  of 
Scotland.  Leading  Scotchmen  appealed  for  advice  to 
Edward,  who  was  then  in  Gascony.  He  recommended 
a  regency,  which  was  appointed,  and  he  did  not  hasten 
his  return,  or  show  any  disposition  to  take  advantage 
of  the  confusion.  His  son  Edward,  like  the  heiress  of 

1290  Scotland,  was  a  child.  He  proposed  a  marriage  between 
them,  which  would  have  amicably  united  the  two  king- 
doms. The  Scotch  baronage  assented,  a  treaty  was 
framed,  and  it  is  allowed  by  all  that  the  terms  were 
fair  and  honourable  to  the  weaker  kingdom.  But  the 

1290  little  Maid  of  Norway,  as  she  was  called,  died  on  her 
passage  to  Scotland.  Her  death,  like  the  arrow  which 
pierced  the  brain  of  Harold,  or  the  fatal  waft  of  mist 
which  crossed  the  battlefield  of  Liitzen,  was  one  of  those 
incalculable  accidents  which,  turning  the  whole  course 
of  events,  seem  to  make  it  impossible  that  history  should 

1290  become  a  science  of  prediction.  Thirteen  claimants  to 
the  Scotch  throne  now  started  up,  civil  war  impended, 
and  leading  Scotchmen  again  called  on  Edward  to  inter- 
vene and  save  Scotland  from  confusion.  Edward  con- 
sented to  intervene  if  he  were  recognized  as  over-lord 
of  Scotland.  The  question  of  the  over-lordship  is  de- 
bated among  learned  and  impartial  writers  to  this  day. 
William  I.,  William  II.,  and  Henry  II.  had  forced  the 
king  of  Scots  to  do  them  homage.  But  what  Henry  II. 


viii  EDWARD  I  196 

had  extorted,  Richard  I.,  to  raise  money  for  his  crusade, 
had  sold  back.  The  question  was  complicated  by  the 
fealty  which  the  kings  of  Scotland  owed  for  the  fief  held 
by  them  as  Earls  of  Huntingdon  in  England,  and  which 
brought  them  as  feudatories  to  the  English  court  and  camp. 
In  an  uncritical  age,  at  all  events,  Edward  might  believe 
in  the  legality  of  a  claim  which  he  had  allowed  to  remain 
in  suspense  but  had  never  waived  ;  and,  if  the  law  was 
doubtful,  or  more  than  doubtful,  the  policy  of  union  in 
the  interest  of  both  countries  was  clear.  Edward's  claim 
to  the  over-lordship,  at  any  rate,  was  distinctly  put  for- 
ward, and  was  recognized  freely  and  with  full  delibera- 
tion on  the  part  of  Scotland.  As  over-lord,  and  in  no 
other  capacity,  without  any  special  instrument  of  sub- 
mission to  him  as  arbitrator,  Edward  heard  and  decided 
the  cause.  It  is  not  disputed  that  he  heard  it  fairly,  or  1292 
that  he  was  right  in  deciding  in  favour  of  Baliol,  as  the 
representative  of  the  elder  line,  against  Bruce  who  was 
nearer  to  the  stock  by  one  degree.  Bruce  and  Baliol 
alike  were  holders  of  fiefs  in  England,  but  Bruce,  per- 
haps, was  the  more  English  of  the  two.  One  of  the 
competitors  had  contended  that  the  kingdom  was  parti- 
ble like  ordinary  estates,  and  had  Edward's  design  been 
evil  he  would  probably  have  decided  that  it  was.  Hav- 
ing given  judgment  he  set  Baliol  on  his  throne,  delivered 
the  fortresses  of  the  kingdom,  which,  pending  the  suit, 
had  been  placed  in  his  hands,  to  the  new  king,  exhorted 
him  to  govern  well,  and  for  four  years  left  him  to  govern. 
There  is  apparently  no  reason  for  supposing  that  he 
meant  to  disturb  anything  in  Scotland,  or  that  he  was 
not  satisfied  with  the  settlement,  which  simply  secured 
peace  by  a  feudal  bond  between  the  two  kingdoms.  All 


196  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

that  he  did  was  to  receive  appeals,  which  was  the  right 
and  duty  of  an  over-lord,  recognized  by  himself  in  his 
relation,  as  the  holder  of  French  fiefs,  to  the  king  of 
France,  though  he  could  not,  as  king  of  England,  put 
his  person  in  his  French  enemy's  hands.  We  have  seen 
what  was  the  temper  of  a  Norman  nobility.  It  was 
probably  by  their  own  spirit  of  restlessness  and  cabal, 
rather  than  by  any  wound  given  to  their  national  feel- 
ing by  what  they  must  have  known  to  be  a  common 
incident  of  over-lordship,  that  the  Scotch  barons  were 
1295  led  suddenly  to  rise  against  Baliol,  practically  depose 
him,  confiscate  the  estates  of  Englishmen  in  Scotland, 
ally  themselves  with  the  king  of  France,  then  at  war 
with  England,  and  without  a  declaration  of  war  invade 
Cumberland  and  ravage  it,  if  local  chroniclers  can  be 
trusted,  with  the  usual  barbarity.  Upon  this  Edward 

1295  advanced  and  subdued  Scotland.     It  was  his   right  and 
his  duty  so  to  do.     Having  made  himself  master  of  Scot- 
land,, he   disturbed   nothing,   did   harm   to   nobody   any 
more,  but  simply  annexed  the  country  on  an  equal  foot- 
ing  to   England.     If   there  was   cruel   slaughter   at  the 

1296  storming   of   Berwick  it  was  not  unprovoked,  and  such 
were  the  savage  habits  of  that  age,  and  of  ages  long  after 
this,  in  the  case  of  garrisons  which,  after  summons,  stood 

1296  a  storm.  Baliol  surrendered  his  kingdom  as  forfeited 
by  breach  of  fealty  to  the  over-lord.  In  a  parliament 
at  Berwick  Edward  received  the  homage  of  the  clergy, 
baronage,  and  gentry  of  Scotland.  Thirty-five  skins  of 
parchment  were  filled  with  their  names  and  their  prom- 
ises of  allegiance.  If  such  submissions  were  invalid  there 
would  be  no  end  to  war.  Nor  could  supreme  respect  be 
due  to  an  independence  which  signed  the  Ragman's  Roll. 


vin  EDWARD  I  197 

Edward,  however,  had  now  been  forced  to  take  the 
fatal  step  from  the  position  of  a  rightful  over-lord  to  that 
of  a  conqueror.  Conquest  in  him  would  have  been  sage 
and  mild;  after  the  first  pang  the  Scotch  people  would 
have  found  themselves  freed  in  some  measure  from  the 
domination  of  a  lawless  and  oppressive  oligarchy,  under 
parliamentary  government,  and  in  the  enjoyment  of  se- 
cure peace.  But  this  depended  on  the  king's  presence. 
He  was  called  away  to  the  defence  of  his  calamitous  pos- 
sessions in  France.  The  retention  of  Gascony  when  the  1297 
other  continental  dominions  of  the  house  of  Anjou  were 
happily  lost,  is  one  of  the  great  disasters  of  English 
history,  poorly  compensated  by  freedom  of  trade  with 
Bordeaux.  Cressingham,  Edward's  vice-gerent  in  Scot- 
land, seems  to  have  been  haughty  and  unwise,  while  the 
bearing  of  a  victorious  soldiery,  unless  controlled,  is  sure 
to  be  offensive.  Perhaps  in  the  west  of  Scotland,  where 
there  was  a  mixture  in  the  population  of  a  more  primi- 
tive and  wilder  element,  the  very  approach  of  order  was 
enough  to  stir  revolt.  Wallace,  whose  proper  name, 
Waleys,  denotes  his  Celtic  origin,  a  man  of  middle  rank, 
having  slain  an  Englishman,  and  being  outlawed,  took  to 
the  woods,  gathered  a  band,  and  put  to  death  all  the  Eng-  1297 
lish  who  fell  into  his  power.  His  following  swelled  to  an 
army,  and  at  Stirling,  Cressingham,  by  madly  defiling  1297 
over  a  narrow  bridge  in  the  face  of  the  enemy,  threw  a 
victory  into  his  hands.  Wallace  invaded  the  north  of 
England  and  ravaged  it  with  the  most  savage  cruelty, 
leaving,  in  the  words  of  a  Scotch  historian,  nothing  be- 
hind him  but  blood  and  ashes.  He  was  now  master  in 
Scotland ;  but  the  nobles  would  not  join  him,  and  to  re- 
cruit his  army  he  had  to  inaugurate  a  reign  of  terror, 


198  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

setting  up  gibbets  and  hanging  those  who  refused  to  en- 
list. Edward  again  entered  Scotland  and  annihilated  the 

1298  army  of  Wallace  at  Falkirk,  opening  the  serried  masses 
of  Scotch  spearmen  with  the  English  long-bow,  which 
here  for  the  first  time  shows  its  power.  Wallace  was 
totally  deserted  by  his  following  and  wandered  in  obscu- 
rity for  seven  years,  at  the  end  of  which  he  was  given  up 
by  the  Scotch  of  the  other  party,  carried  to  London, 

1305  tried,  and  executed  as  a  traitor.  His  plea  and  the  plea  of 
Scotch  historians  in  his  behalf  is  that  he  could  not  have 
been  guilty  of  treason  since  he  had  not  sworn  fealty  to 
the  king  of  England.  He  was  indicted  not  only  for  trea- 
son, but  for  his  murders,  burnings,  sacrileges,  and  other 
atrocities.  If  a  private  citizen  of  Alsace-Lorraine,  after 
the  cession  of  that  territory  to  Germany,  had  raised  an 
insurrection  on  his  own  account,  murdered  every  German 
on  whom  he  could  lay  his  hands,  tied  German  priests 
and  nuns  back  to  back  and  thrown  them  into  rivers, 
hanged  subjects  of  the  empire  for  refusing  to  join  his 
army,  invaded  a  German  province,  butchered  its  inhabi- 
tants without  regard  to  age  or  sex,  burnt  a  church  full  of 
people,  and  made  men  and  women  dance  naked  before  him, 
pricking  them  with  lances,  the  fact  that  he  had  not  per- 
sonally sworn  fealty  to  the  German  emperor  would  hardly 
have  saved  his  life.  The  hideous  .  mutilation  of  a 
traitor's  body  was  the  barbarism  of  the  age.  It  was  in 
the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century  that  the  Scotch, 

1650  after  hanging  Montrose  for  waging  war  against  them, 
stuck  his  head  upon  a  pole,  sent  his  four  limbs  to  four 
different  cities,  and  buried  his  mutilated  trunk  under  the 
gibbet.  Wallace  himself  had  made  a  sword-belt  of  Cres- 
singham's  skin. 


vin  EDWARD  I  199 

The  fall  of  Wallace  brought  the  baronial  party  of  inde- 
pendence again  to  the  front,  and  Comyn,  the  leading 
noble,  was  elected  a  guardian  of  the  realm.  Edward  had  1299 
to  make  two  more  campaigns,  which,  however,  proved 
little  more  than  military  parades.  Again  he  disturbed 
nothing,  took  no  vengeance  on  anybody,  though  the  per- 
fidy of  those  who  had  rebelled  after  solemn  submission 
and  homage  must  have  stung  him  to  the  heart.  The  gar- 
rison of  Stirling  held  out,  contrary  to  the  laws  of  war, 
after  the  surrender  of  the  kingdom,  and  Edward  nearly  1304 
lost  his  life  in  the  siege ;  yet  he  spared  the  garrison.  He 
caused  a  convention  to  be  held  at  Perth  for  the  election 
of  Scottish  deputies  to  act  in  conjunction  with  English 
deputies  on  a  commission  for  the  settlement  of  Scotland. 
The  commission  framed  a  plan,  making  the  king's 
nephew,  John  of  Bretagne,  governor,  constituting  a  joint  1305 
judiciary  of  Englishmen  and  Scotchmen,  and  providing 
for  a  revision  of  the  laws  of  David,  king  of  Scotland. 
This  was  an  anticipation  of  the  union. 

Edward  might  flatter  himself  that  the  fire  of  resistance 
in  Scotland  was  extinct.  It  was  only  smouldering.  Yet 
had  he  lived  and  had  his  hands  been  free,  it  would  prob- 
ably not  again  have  blazed ;  probably  it  would  have  died 
away.  But  his  hands  had  been  full  of  troubles  and  for- 
eign war ;  and  now  he  was  near  his  end.  His  failing 
strength  was  no  doubt  marked  by  an  ambitious  advent- 
urer at  his  side.  Robert  Bruce,  destined  to  delay  for 
four  calamitous  centuries  the  reunion  of  the  Anglo-Saxon 
race  in  Britain,  was  no  Scotch  patriot,  but  a  Norman  ad- 
venturer, playing  his  own  game,  carving  out  for  himself 
a  kingdom  with  his  sword,  as  was  the  fashion  of  his  race, 
and  as  his  brother  Edward  tried  afterwards  to  do  in 


200  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

Ireland.  He  was  the  grandson  of  Robert  Bruce,  the 
competitor  for  the  Scottish  crown.  Bruce  the  competitor 
held,  with  his  Scotch  earldom  of  Carrick,  great  estates 
in  Yorkshire,  and  had  been  a  member  of  the  judiciary  in 
England.  His  son,  the  second  Robert  Bruce,  was  Ed- 
ward's intimate  friend,  had  gone  with  him  to  the  crusade, 
and  was  always  a  loyal  subject  of  the  English  crown. 
The  third  Robert  Bruce,  now  coming  on  the  scene,  was 
probably  born  in  England,  had  lived  in  Edward's  court, 
eaten  his  bread,  borne  fealty  to  him,  enjoyed  his  confi- 
dence, been  addressed  by  him  as  "  loyal  and  faithful,"  and 
employed  by  him  in  receiving  the  submission  of  a  Scotch 
district.  To  prove  his  fidelity  he  had  ravaged  the  estates 
of  one  of  the  opposite  party.  It  seems  true  that  since 
the  dethronement  of  Baliol  he  had  formed  an  ambitious 
design  and  had  been  playing  a  double  game.  But  a 
double  game  is  not  patriotism  or  honour.  Seeing,  as  no 
doubt  he  did,  that  Edward's  vigour  was  departing,  Bruce 

1305  slipped  away  to  Scotland,  laid  claim  to  the  crown,  and 
set  up  the  standard  of  revolt.     Comyn,  the  late  guardian 
and  the  head  of  the  nobility,  stood  in  his  way.     On  pre- 
tence of  a  conference  he  trained  him  to  a  church  and 

1306  stabbed  him  there.      To  the  stain  of  treachery  he  thus 
added  the  stain  of  murder.     It  does  not  seem  that  he  was 
at  first  received  with  enthusiasm.     His  chief  supporter 
was  Wishart,  Bishop  of  Glasgow,  a  man  double-dyed  in 
perfidy.     Edward's  wrath   now  broke  forth  beyond   his 
wont,  yet  not  wholly  without  measure.     He  pronounced 
sentence  of  death  against  all  who  had  been  implicated  in 
the  murder  of  Comyn,  imprisonment  during  his  pleasure 
against  all  who  "had  taken  part  in  the  revolt.     He  car- 
ried out  his  sentence  against  Nigel  Bruce,  the  brother  of 


viii  EDWARD   I  201 

Robert,  and  such  leaders  of  the  insurrection  as  fell  into 
Ins  hands.  A  government  in  our  own  day  could  scarcely 
do  less.  The  Scotch  exulted  in  what  they  called  "  Doug-  1307 
las's  larder,"  the  feat  of  one  of  Bruce's  adherents  who 
surprised  an  English  garrison  in  a  church,  slew  them  all, 
and,  being  unable  to  hold  the  castle,  threw  the  bodies  of 
the  English  upon  a  pile  of  wood  and  burnt  the  whole. 
Bruce,  unable  to  withstand  the  forces  sent  against  him, 
had  to  take  refuge  in  the  woods.  But  being  a  man  of 
great  military  capacity  and  powers  of  leadership  he  ral- 
lied and  made  head  again.  Once  more  Edward  heard  the 
call  of  royal  duty  and  obeyed ;  but  his  last  hour  had 
come.  He  was  suffering  from  a  mortal  malady.  Un-  1307 
dauntedly  he  struggled  with  it  and  rode  at  the  head  of 
his  army  till  he  could  ride  but  two  miles  a  day,  and  at 
last  was  obliged  to  take  to  his  litter.  So,  on  the  march, 
and  still  eagerly  pressing  forward,  he  ended  the  life  1307 
which  had  been  one  long  march  of  duty.  His  dying 
words  were  an  expression  of  faith  in  God,  with  a  command 
that  his  heart  should  be  carried  to  the  Holy  Land,  to  an 
expedition  for  the  relief  of  which  he  had  looked  forward 
as  the  blessed  end  of  his  long  life  of  toil.  He  enjoined 
his  son  to  carry  his  bones  at  the  head  of  the  army  into 
Scotland. 

Richelieu  in  his  day  crushed  feudal  anarchy  and  in- 
stalled order  in  its  room.  But  he  did  not  call  forth 
life,  and  the  end  was  decay.  Edward  I.  called  forth  life. 
His  work  did  not  decay.  Hard  by  the  beautiful  effigy  of 
Eleanor  at  Westminster  her  husband  rests  in  a  severely 
simple  tomb.  Pass  it  not  by  for  its  simplicity ;  few 
tombs  hold  nobler  dust. 


CHAPTER  IX 

EDWARD   II 
BORN  1284  ;  SUCCEEDED  1307  ;  DEPOSED  AND  DIED  1327 

TNSTEAD  of  carrying  his  father's  bones  onwards  at 
the  head  of  the  army,  and  completing  his  father's 
work,  Edward  II.  soon  turned  away  from  the  affairs  of 
Scotland  to  his  pleasures,  and  left  Bruce  time  to  repair 
his  reverses  and  seat  himself  firmly  on  the  throne.  After 
an  interval  of  seven  years,  and  when  the  troubles  of  his 
reign  had  begun,  he  led  an  army  which  his  chief  barons 
refused  to  join,  and  which  could  have  no  confidence  in 
1314  its  commander,  to  total  defeat  at  Bannockburn.  So 
ended  for  many  a  day  the  hope  of  a  united  Britain.  In 
place  of  it  came  centuries  of  mutual  hatred,  reciprocal 
havoc,  devastating  war,  border  brigandage,  and  common 
insecurity ;  of  disunion  in  Scotland  herself,  the  Lowland 
kingdom  not  having  strength  to  subdue  and  incorporate 
the  Highlands ;  of  diplomatic  vassalage  of  Scotland  to 
France ;  of  retarded  civilization  on  both  sides,  but  espe- 
cially on  the  side  of  the  weaker  kingdom.  If  destiny 
had  a  partial  compensation  for  these  evils  in  store,  it 
was  beyond  the  ken  either  of  Plantagenet  or  of  Bruce. 
The  game  which  Robert  Bruce  had  played  in  Scotland 
his  brother  Edward  attempted  to  play  in  Ireland,  but 
after  filling  the  island  with  havoc  and  tasting  of  Celtic 
inconstancy,  he  was  encountered  by  a  better  commander 

202 


CHAP,  ix  EDWARD  II  203 

than  Edward  II.  in  the  person  of  Sir  John  Bermingham, 
and  on  the  field  of  Dundalk  met  his  doom.  1318 

It  mast  have  added  a  pang  to  the  great  king's  death 
to  think  in  what  hands  he  left  the  government.  If,  as 
Horace  says,  the  eagle  does  not  breed  the  dove,  he 
breeds  the  trow,  and  perhaps  in  the  course  of  nature. 
Edward  I.,  the  son  of  a  weak  father,  had  himself  been 
strengthened  by  early  conflict  with  an  adverse  world. 
His  son's  weakness  had  probably  been  increased  by  the 
shelter  of  his  father's  strength  and  the  prospect  of  an 
assured  throne.  The  pains  which  his  father  had  taken 
to  train  him  for  business  and  war,  he  being  apt  for 
neither,  may  have  increased  his  distaste  for  both.  He 
was  in  person  a  hollow  counterfeit  of  his  father  ;  a  tall 
and  handsome  figure  without  the  soul ;  a  man  of  pleas- 
ure, elegant  but  frivolous  in  Ms  tastes  and  pursuits, 
incapable  of  standing  alone,  and  always  leaning  help- 
lessly on  favourites.  Such  are  the  chances  of  hereditary 
monarchy ;  such  perhaps  is  its  corrective ;  for  a  line 
of  strong  kings  might  be  fatal  to  liberty. 

It  seems  that  the  age  was.  declining  from  the  mascu- 
line, chivalrous,  and  religious  character  which  had  been 
embodied  in  the  first  Edward,  and  that  the  mental 
effeminacy  of  the  second  Edward  was. partly  the  infec- 
tion of  his  time.  The  end  of  the  crusades  is  marked 
by  the  dissolution  of  the  order  of  Templars,  the  great  1308 
soldiers  of  the  Cross,  in  France  with  hideous  cruelty, 
in  England  with  comparative  mildness  and  respect  for 
the  persons  of  the  knights. 

A  change  was  coming  over  the  character  of  one  of  the 
political  forces.  In  place  of  the  Norman  baronage  of 
the  Conquest,  or  of  the  English  baronage  which  had 


204  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CUAP. 

led  the  nation  in  its  resistance  to  the  tyranny  of  John 
and  the  misgovernment  of  Henry  III.,  there  was  rising 
a  group  of  magnates  headed  by  kinsmen  of  the  royal 
house,  who,  by  marriage,  inheritance,  escheat,  or  royal 
favour,  joined  earldom  to  earldom  and  had  accumulated 
vast  domains.  Of  the  twelve  greatest  fiefs,  seven 
had  come  into  the  royal  family  before  the  death  of 
Edward  I.  The  formation  of  appanages  for  members 
of  the  royal  family  was  a  policy  apparently  strong,  but 
really  weak.  Instead  of  being  supporters,  the  holders 
of  the  appanages  became  restless  rivals  of  the  crown  ; 
and  in  those  days  ambitious  energy  could  find  no  scope 
other  than  war,  except  in  intrigue.  The  cabals,  treasons, 
and  rebellions  of  the  magnates,  when  the  government  is 
not  strong  enough  to  control  them,  fill  the  scene ,'  till 
at  last  there  are  formed  two  parties,  ostensibly  dynastic, 
but  really  oligarchical,  which,  in  the  civil  war  of  the 
Roses,  fall  on  each  other's  swords.  At  the  same  time 
there  is  usually  a  court  party  devoted  to  the  interests 
of  the  crown  and  to  its  own,  naturally  headed  by  the 
king's  favourites,  and  regarded  with  jealous  hatred  by 
the  grandees. 

Edward  II.  had  formed  a  fatuous  attachment  to  Piers 
Gaveston,  a  young  Gascon  full  of  gasconade,  brilliant 
but  worthless,  the  precursor  of  the  minions  of  James  I. 
The  late  king  had  striven  in  vain  to  break  off  the  fatal 
connection.  No  sooner  was  he  gone  than  his  son  was 
again  in  Gaveston's  arms.  Gifts,  grants,  and  honours 
were  heaped  upon  the  favourite  with  an  extravagance 
almost  insane.  Together  the  pair  led  a  life  of  dissipa- 
tion, profusion,  and  misrule.  Gaveston,  among  other 
diversions,  indulged  in  that  of  scoffing  at  the  grandees, 


ix  EDWARD   II  205 

giving  them  nicknames,  and  unhorsing  them  at  tourna- 
ments, in  which,  as  in  everything  martial,  he  showed 
prowess.  The  Earl  of  Warwick  he  nicknamed  the 
Black  Dog,  and  the  Black  Dog  vowed  that  the  minion 
should  feel  his  teeth. 

Signs  of  a  gathering  storm  soon  appeared.  The  gov- 
ernment had  to  forbid  tournaments,  which  were  the 
pretexts  for  insurrectionary  meetings  in  those  days,  as 
hunting  parties  were  in  Jacobite  times.  There  was  first 
opposition  in  parliament,  the  commons,  at  the  prompting, 
probably,  of  disaffected  magnates  demanding  that  redress 
of  grievances  should  be  granted  as  a  condition  precedent 
to  their  grant  of  a  subsidy ;  then  there  was  an  assem- 
blage of  the  barons  in  arms.  The  precedent  of  Henry 
III.  and  the  Provisions  of  Oxford  appears  to  have  been 
in  the  mind  of  the  authors  of  the  movement.  The  part 
of  Simon  De  Montfort  was  played  by  an  inferior  actor, 
the  king's  cousin,  Thomas,  Earl  at  once  of  Lancaster, 
Lincoln,  Leicester,  Salisbury,  and  Derb}^  who  here  laid 
for  the  bearer  of  his  title  the  foundation  of  an  opposition 
policy  something  like  that  of  the  house  of  Orleans  in 
its  antagonism  to  the  elder  branch  of  the  Bourbons. 
A  committee  of  lords  and  prelates  was  formed  resem- 
bling that  formed  by  the  parliament  of  Oxford,  and  a 
set  of  ordinances  was  framed  and  imposed  upon  the  isn 
king.  These  ordinances  enumerate  and  condemn  the 
old  and  ever-recurring  imposts  and  abuses,  fiscal,  judi- 
cial, and  forestal,  as  well  as  the  waste  of  the  royal 
domains  by  prodigal  grants  and  the  malversation  which 
diverted  the  revenues  from  the  exchequer  to  the  king's 
pleasures  or  to  the  coffers  of  his  favourite  ;  while  the 
hand  of  the  prelates  is  seen  in  the  prohibition  of  inter- 


206  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

ference  with  the  church  courts.  It  appears  that  among 
his  irregular  modes  of  raising  money  the  king  had  been 
tampering  with  the  coinage,  and  this  grievance  also  is 
denounced.  But  the  ordinances  go  on  to  claim  a  con- 
trol over  the  appointment  of  all  the  great  officers  of 
state,  as  well  as  over  the  conduct  of  war  and  the  raising 
of  forces  for  it.  It  is  further  ordained  that  parliaments 
shall  be  held  at  least  once  in  every  year,  and  that  a 
tribunal  for  hearing  complaints  against  the  king's  offi- 
cers, for  impeachment  in  fact,  shall  be  formed.  These 
were  ordinances  of  virtual  deposition,  against  which  the 
king  was  sure,  if  he  retained  a  particle  of  royal  instinct, 
as  soon  as  he  had  an  opportunity  to  revolt. 

1308  Gaveston  had  been  banished  and   had   sworn   not  to 
return.     But  the  pope,  ever  open   to  the   approaches  of 
royalty,  absolved  him  from   his   oath    and   he  returned. 

1309  The  lords  then  took  up  arms,  and  Gaveston,  falling  into 
the  hands  of  the  Black  Dog  of  Warwick,  did  feel  his 

1312  teeth,  being  beheaded  without  trial  on  Blacklow  Hill. 
His  enemies  might  say  that  under  the  ordinances  he  had 
been  banished  and  declared  liable  to  treatment  as  a  public 
enemy  -if  he  returned.  So  ended  his  tragi-comedy.  He 
seems,  besides  his  strange  fascinations,  to  have  had  some 
capacity,  at  least  for  war,  and  to  have  done  well  as  vice- 
gerent in  Ireland,  though  he  led  his  royal  friend  madly 
on  the  road  to  ruin. 

The  king  now  put  himself  into  the  hands  of  the 
Despensers,  father  and  son.  He  struggled,  as  might 
have  been  expected,  against  the  ordinances.  But  he 
was  depressed  by  his  defeat  at  Bannockburn,  which  was 
followed  by  devastating  inroads  of  the  Scotch,  and 

1319   presently  by  the  loss  of  another  battle  at  Mitton.     Fam- 


ix  EDWARD  II  207 

ine  came  to  complete  the  unpopularity  of  his  government 
as  well  as  the  wretchedness  of  the  times.  Lancaster  now 
grasped  power,  making  the  consent  of  the  council  neces-  1314 
sary  to  all  acts  of  government  and  himself  president  of 
the  council.  But  he  who  sets  his  foot  on  the  steps  of  a 
throne  should  mount.  If  he  does  not,  he  falls.  A  power 
like  that  of  Lancaster,  even  if  it  is  popular  at  first,  is  sure 
to  create  jealousy  and  raise  up  foes,  while  it  has  no  robe 
or  diadem  to  command  respect.  Things  went  little  bet- 
ter under  Lancaster's  ascendancy  than  they  had  gone 
before.  His  party  split  and  general  confusion  followed. 
Suddenly  the  king  borrowed  courage  from  despair  and 
took  up  arms.  He  found  unexpected  support.  Lancas- 
ter was  defeated,  taken  prisoner,  and  with  a  number  of  1322 
his  partisans  put  to  death.  Like  De  Montfort,  he  was 
canonized  by  the  people  as  a  patriot  saint,  and  miracles 
were  performed  at  his  tomb.  But  the  measure  of  his 
patriotism  compared  with  that  of  his  ambition  seems  to 
have  been  small;  it  was  small  indeed  if,  as  appears,  he 
was  in  treasonable  correspondence  with  the  Scotch. 

The  party  of  the  ordinances  was  now  overthrown, 
and  the  Despensers,  father  and  son,  reigned  in  the 
king's  name.  What  were  their  political  aims  can 
hardly  be  said.  They  were  the  son  and  grandson  of  a 
baron  and  justiciar  who  had  fallen  by  the  side  of 
De  Montfort  at  Evesham.  The  father  was  a  veteran 
minister  of  Edward  I.  In  a  parliamentary  attack  on 
them  the  younger  Despenser  was  accused  of  teaching 
the  doctrines  that  it  is  to  the  crown,  not  to  the  person 
of  the  king,  that  allegiance  is  due,  and  that  it  is  the  duty 
of  the  subject  if  the  king  goes  wrong  to  force  him  to 
mend  his  ways.  When  the  ordinances  were  overthrown, 


208  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

the  restoration  of  royal  government  was  proclaimed  under 
1322  the  influence  of  the  Despensers  by  the  announcement  that 
"  from  henceforth  matters  to  be  established  for  the  estate 
of  our  lord  the  king  and  for  his  heirs  and  for  the  estate 
of  the  realm  and  people  shall  be  considered  and  estab- 
lished in  parliament  by  our  lord  the  king  and  by  the 
consent  of  the  prelates,  earls,  and  barons,  and  of  the  com- 
monalty of  the  realm,  according  as  it  has  been  hitherto 
accustomed."  This  declaration,  it  will  be  observed,  was 
pointed  against  the  baronial  ordinances,  not  against  the 
prerogative  of  the  crown.  We  must  be  on  our  guard 
through  these  ages  against  taking  manifestoes  of  party 
for  measures  of  advancing  principle.  The  practical  con- 
cessions of  the  ordinances  were  at  the  same  time  con- 
firmed. Hence  it  has  been  conjectured  that  the  policy 
of  the  Despensers  may  have  been,  like  that  of  Edward  I., 
national  and  anti-feudal ;  it  must  at  all  events  have  been 
opposed  to  the  ascendancy  of  the  magnates.  But  popu- 
larity and  the  support  of  parliament  were  necessary  to 
the  recovery  of  their  power ;  and  when  their  power  was 
recovered  no  policy  seems  to  have  restrained  the  rapacity 
of  the  father  or  the  reckless  violence  of  the  son.  Favour- 
1326  ites  always  are,  or  can  be  easily  made,  odious.  The  ease 
with  which  the  government  was  overthrown  by  such  con- 
spirators as  the  vile  queen  and  her  vile  paramour  Morti- 
mer seems  to  prove  that  it  was  not  only  weak  but  detested 
and  friendless. 

1326  Savage  atrocity  was  shown  by  the  victors  in  the  execu- 
tion of  the  Despensers  as  it  had  been  by  the  other  party 
in  the  execution  of  Lancaster.  This  characterized,  and 
continues  to  characterize,  wars  not  of  principle  but  of 
personal  rivalry  and  faction.  After  the  fall  of  De  Mont- 


ix  EDWARD   II  209 

fort  there  had  been  forfeitures,  but  no  executions.  The 
nation  now  underwent  its  baptism  of  bloody  civil  war. 
A  sinister  omen  also  is  the  appearance  of  Orlton,  a  bishop, 
as  an  arch-traitor  and  an  accomplice  in  the  murder  of  the 
king. 

It  is  needless  to  recount  the  tragic  end  of  Edward,  in   1327 
depicting  which  Marlowe  has  rivalled  Shakespeare. 

Through  all  these  troubles,  revolutions,  and  rebellions, 
the  work  of  Edward  I.,  though  sorely  strained,  had  borne 
the  strain.  The  nation  had  never,  as  in  the  time  of  Ste- 
phen, lost  its  organization.  Government  had  remained 
parliamentary ;  each  revolution  had  assumed  a  parlia- 
mentary guise ;  the  king,  after  his  victory  over  the  mag- 
nates and  the  overthrow  of  the  ordinances,  had  continued 
to  call  parliaments ;  and  it  was  by  the  action  of  parlia- 
ment, with  constitutional  formalities  devised  apparently 
for  the  occasion,  that  Edward  II.  was  deposed  and  his 
crown  was  given  to  his  son.  Mortimer,  again,  proceeded  to 
base  his  domination  on  a  parliament,  though  a  parliament, 
no  doubt,  so  far  as  the  commons  were  concerned,  packed 
by  his  party.  It  has  been  truly  remarked  that  the  House 
of  Commons,  as  a  body  always  renewed  apart  from  oli- 
garchic faction  and  unscathed  by  its  sword  or  axe,  was 
likely  to  gain  in  authority  by  the  confusion  in  which  oli- 
garchies or  favourites  perished.  Thus  the  "little  people 
of  the  commons"  pushed  their  way  beside  the  "great 
men  "  of  the  nobility  whom  they  were  destined  in  the  end 
to  thrust  from  power.  The  weak  point  of  the  Commons' 
House  would  be  the  want  of  personal  continuity,  in  an 
age  in  which  there  was  no  political  press  to  bridge  the 
intervals  between  parliaments,  keep  alive  leadership,  and 
prepare  the  new  members  for  their  work. 


CHAPTER  X 

EDWARD  in 
BORN  1312;  SUCCEEDED  1327;  DIED  1377 

T^OR  four  years,  under  the  nominal  kingship  of  a  boy, 
the  country  endured  the  rule  of  a  French  adulteress 
and  murderess  with  her  paramour.  But  Mortimer  ended 
like  other  usurpers  who  do  not  consummate  their  usurpa- 
tion ;  conspiracy,  which  had  raised,  overthrew  him ;  and 
at  eighteen  Edward  III.  began  not  only  to  reign  but  to 
rule.  In  him  a  part  of  the  first  Edward  lived  again,  but 
a  part  only.  He  was  a  brilliant  soldier  and  a  magnificent 
'man,  but  hardly  a  general  arid  still  less  a  statesman.  His 
reign  belongs  more  to  the  history  of  war  than  of  politics, 
and  it  is  a  reign  of  calamity  under  the  guise  of  victory,  of 
splendid  achievements  bearing  no  fruit  and  bringing  end- 
less evils  in  their  train.  Political  development,  however, 
was  promoted  through  the  financial  exigencies  of  war 
and  the  political  element  in  war  power  was  signally  dis- 
played. 

It  was  in  the  right  field  that  the  young  paladin  gave 
the  first  proof  of  his  prowess.  Furnished  with  justi- 
fication by  Scottish  raids  on  England,  he  began  to  con- 
quer where  conquest  might  have  been  lasting,  and,  if 
lasting,  would,  in  the  end,  have  been  beneficent.  By  his 
1333  signal  victory  at  Halidon  he  showed  that  at  Bannockburn 
the  fault  had  not  been  in  the  army  but  in  the  commander. 

210 


CHAP,  x  EDWARD   III  211 

He  annexed  Berwick,  and  had  he  steadily  brought  his 
force  to  bear  in  that  direction,  he  would  probably  have 
annexed  Scotland.  The  marvellous  success  of  Baliol, 
who,  in  a  moment,  and  with  a  handful  of  troops,  made 
himself  master  of  the  country,  transient  as  it  was,  sufficed  1332- 
to  show  that  the  resistance,  though  stubborn,  was  not 
adamantine  or  such  as  superior  force  and  policy  united 
might  not  have  overcome.  Unhappily,  Edward  was 
tempted  to  exchange  the  bleak  and  hungry  north,  where 
his  real  treasure  lay,  for  a  sunnier,  richer,  and,  as  it 
seemed  to  him,  more  glorious,  field  in  France.  He  was 
the  paragon  of  his  age,  and  the  age  was  one  of  warlike 
but  frivolous  adventure.  The  true  chivalry  of  the  cru- 
sades was  dead ;  its  knell  was  the  fall  of  the  Templars. 
In  its  place  had  come  a  false  chivalry  with  fantastic 
orders,  such  as  the  orders  of  the  Garter,  the  Thistle,  the 
Collar,  the  Golden  Fleece,  with  the  adoration  of  the 
swan  and  the  pheasant,  with  Quixotic  vows  and  feats  of 
arms,  with  a  fatuous  woman-worship,  unaccompanied  by 
any  real  respect  for  the  virtue  of  woman.  Young  knights 
go  to  war  with  a  bandage  over  one  eye,  vowing  that  they 
will  not  see  with  both  till  they  have  done  some  feat  of 
arms  in  honour  of  their  mistress.  Now  heraldry  becomes 
a  science.  Of  these  knights-errant  Froissart  is  the  prose 
troubadour,  and  the  author  of  "  Palamon  and  Arcite," 
with  its  amatory  extravagances,  is  the  poet.  War  to 
these  men  is  the  most  exciting  and  glorious  of  tourna- 
ments, and  it  is  hardly  more  serious  than  a  tournament, 
except  that  it  yields  to  the  victor  a  rich  harvest  in  booty 
and  ransoms.  King  Edward  sinks  the  general  in  the 
champion ;  he  throws  himself  into  the  fray  from  sheer 
love  of  fighting ;  goes  into  action  disguised  that  he  may 


212  THE   UNITEJ)   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

encounter  a  doughty  antagonist.  He  and  his  companions 
in  arms  prepare  for  battle  as  for  a  feast.  He  refuses  to 
order  up  the  reserves  to  the  support  of  the  Black  Prince 
at  the  crisis  of  a  battle  because  he  wishes  the  boy  to  win 
his  spurs.  The  love  of  pomp  and  magnificence  goes 
with  that  of  glory,  and  the  gorgeous  wardrobe  of  Edward 
III.  forms,  like  everything  else  about  him,  a  contrast  to 
the  simplicity  of  his  grandfather.  The  women  of  the 
upper  class  are  infected  with  the  fancies  of  the  men. 
They  dress  fantastically,  affect  to  mount  chargers  instead 
of  palfreys,  and  ride  about  to  tournaments  with  their 
knights,  at  some  peril  to  their  reputations.  Their  chief 
duty  is  to  rain  influence  on  the  field  of  honour.  At  the 

1340  battle  of  Sluys  the  queen  and  all  the  ladies  of  the  court 
are  with  the  fleet.  Among  the  knights  there  is  strict 
observance  of  mutual  courtesy,  of  the  rules  of  honour, 
and  not  only  of  the  laws,  but  of  the  amenities  and  gen- 
erosities of  war.  But  all  this  is  for  a  caste.  The 
burgher  and  the  peasant  are  treated  as  creatures  made 
of  another  clay.  They  are  despoiled  and  slaughtered 
without  mercy.  The  Black  Prince,  the  mirror  of  this 
chivalry,  and  really  a  noble  character  in  his  way,  waits 
behind  the  chair  of  a  royal  captive,  mounts  him  on  a 
splendid  charger  while  he  rides  himself  on  a  hackney  at 
his  side,  and  indulges  his  wrath  at  a  protracted  resistance 

1370  by  putting  to  the  sword  without  distinction  of  age  or  sex 
the  people  of  Limoges.  For  the  brave  defence  of  Calais, 
Edward  is  on  the  point  of  hanging  ten  burghers,  Eustace 
De  St.  Pierre  and  his  self-devoted  mates,  though  they 
are  saved  by  the  intercession  of  the  queen.  The  king, 
who  would  be  damned  by  failure  to  pay  a  debt  of  honour 
to  another  king  or  knight,  thinks  nothing  of  repudiating 


x  EDWARD   III  213 

an  enormous  debt  to  the  plebeian  banking  houses  of 
Florence. 

These  men  were  young,  and  there  was  a  boyishness  in 
all  they  did.  Life  was  shorter,  manhood  was  earlier,  in 
those  days  than  in  ours.  Most  of  the  nobility  seem  to 
have  died  in  middle  age,  many  of  them  by  violent  deaths. 
"  Old  John  of  Gaunt,  time-honoured  Lancaster,"  lived 
only  to  fifty-nine.  Striplings  married,  striplings  com- 
manded armies.  Edward  III.  was  fifteen  when  he  was 
married,  eighteen  when  he  had  a  son.  He  was  eighteen 
when  he  began  to  govern  and  command.  The  Black 
Prince  was  sixteen  when  he  led  a  division  at  Crecy,  and 
twenty-six  when  he  won  Poitiers.  No  wonder  if  the 
policy  of  a  king  at  twenty  was  impulsive  and  capricious. 
Rather  it  is  wonderful  that  Edward's  diplomatic  combina- 
tions against  France  should  have  been  so  skilful  as  they 
were. 

For  such  spirits  France  offered  far  more  tempting  lists 
than  rough  Scotland,  where  unchivalrous  barbarians  broke 
the  legs  of  the  prisoner  of  war,  or  savage  Ireland  where 
kerne  were  to  be  chased  through  forest  and  over  bog. 
Once  more  the  French  possessions  of  the  king  of  Eng- 
land played  their  ill-starred  part.  To  get  the  English 
out  of  Aquitaine,  and  thus  round  off  the  French  realm, 
was  a  natural  object  of  aspiration  to  a  French  king.  But 
Philip  pursued  it  unscrupulously,  and  by  instigating  the 
Scotch  to  attack  England  gave  a  cause  of  war  which 
Edward  was  only  too  ready  to  embrace.  Edward's  claim 
to  the  crown  of  France  through  his  mother  Isabella  was 
utterly  untenable,  since  it  involved  at  once  an  assertion 
and  a  denial  of  the  right  of  females  to  succeed.  It  seems 
to  have  been  set  up  rather  as  an  engine  of  his  military 


214  THE  UNITED  KINGDOM  CHAP. 

policy  than  as  a  serious  pretension.  He  was  ready  to  ne- 
gotiate about  it,  and  more  than  once  he  neglected  oppor- 
tunities of  entering  Paris  and  assuming  the  crown.  The 
results  were  a  hundred  years'  war,  with  intervals  of 
hollow  peace,  between  two  countries  whose  friendship  was 
most  essential  to  each  other,  and  an  enmity  which  con- 
tinued even  when  that  war  had  closed,  helped  to  bring  on 
other  wars,  and  on  the  side  of  France  at  least  has  not 
died  out  at  this  hour.  Such  victories  as  Sluys,  Crecy, 
and  Poitiers  exalted  the  spirit  of  the  nation,  brought  it 
high  renown,  and  extended  its  influence  in  Europe  ;  yet 
they  were  dearly  purchased  by  the  humiliations  which 
inevitably  followed  when  the  untenable  conquest  slipped 
away,  and  by  the  love  of  blood  and  rapine  which,  as  the 
sequel  proved,  they  bred.  Wealth  won  by  plunder  is 
always  curst,  and  curst  in  its  effects  on  national  character 
was  the  wealth  which  England  won  by  the  plunder  of 
France.  Lightly  it  had  come,  lightly  it  went.  It  pro- 
duced for  a  time  an  outbreak  of  wasteful  luxury  with 
tasteless  extravagance  in  dress,  which  was  followed  by 
impoverishment  and  depression.  On  France  her  king,  in 
provoking  Edward's  pugnacity  and  ambition,  brought 
worse  evils ;  the  devastation,  sweeping  and  repeated,  of 
her  fields  and  cities  by  the  cruel  warfare  of  the  day ;  the 
ravages  not  only  of  the  invader  but  of  the  savage  bands 
under  robber  captains  which  were  the  offspring  of  the 
war ;  the  wreck  of  a  civilization  before  blooming  and  full 
of  hope ;  the  terrible  Jacquerie,  or  rising  of  the  peasants, 
goaded  to  despair  by  the  destruction  of  their  harvests  and 
the  extortion  of  ransoms  for  their  captive  lords ;  and 
worse  even  than  these,  the  destruction  of  political  life 
and  of  the  germs  of  political  institutions  other  than  the 


x  EDWARD   III  215 

monarchy.  Beneath  the  protection  of  the  monarchy  the 
people  were  fain  to  cower,  and  it  thus  became  a  despotism 
gathering  oppressions  and  abuses  till  all  was  swept  away 
by  the  whirlwind  of  revolution. 

The  war,  however,  itself  produced  military  changes 
which  were  not  without  political  effects.  A  new  force, 
comparatively  democratic,  appeared  on  the  field  of  battle 
to  break  the  ascendancy  of  the  feudal  horseman.  One 
summer  afternoon,  on  a  rising  ground,  surmounted  by  a 
windmill,  near  the  village  of  Crecy,  there  lay  a  small 
English  army,  brought  by  the  errors  of  its  king  and  com-  1346 
mander  into  a  desperate  pass,  out  of  which  it  had  now  to 
fight  its  way,  as  British  armies  have  since  more  than  once 
fought  their  way  out  of  desperate  passes  into  which  their 
commanders  had  brought  them.  The  mailed  chivalry  of 
England  with  their  barbed  chargers  are  there  around 
their  chivalrous  king.  But  they  have  dismounted  and 
fight  on  foot.  In  front  is  a  body  of  archers  armed  with 
the  long-bow,  the  force  of  which  has  already  been  felt  on 
Scottish  fields,  but  is  new  to  the  battlefields  of  conti- 
nental Europe.  They  are  men  drawn  from  the  yeomanry, 
many  of  them,  no  doubt,  from  the  holders  of  land  by 
villain  tenure,  which  no  longer  implies  personal  degrada- 
tion. They  are  seated  on  the  ground  to  keep  them  fresh, 
and  have  been  well  fed  by  the  care  of  their  commander, 
who  is  a  king  of  freemen  and  sees  in  them  his  companions 
in  arms.  The  eyes  of  the  whole  army  are  turned  towards 
Abbeville,  the  quarter  from  which  the  enemy  is  expected 
to  appear.  A  heavy  thunderstorm  sweeps  over  the 
plain.  As  it  passes  away  the  enemy  appears.  His  army, 
vastly  outnumbering  the  English,  consists  of  the  chivalry 
of  France  under  their  king,  a  splendid  cavalry;  an  in- 


216  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

fantry  of  serfs,  half-armed  and  unorganized,  dragged  by 
force  from  their  hovels  to  the  field,  mere  food  for  the 
sword  ;  and  a  body  of  Genoese  crossbowmen  come  to  sell 
their  blood  for  foreign  gold.  There  is  no  discipline  or 
control.  The  word  is  given  to  halt,  but  is  disobeyed  by 
the  impetuous  chivalry ;  and  the  whole  host  precipitates 
itself  blindly  on  the  English  position.  The  Genoese  are 
ordered  to  form  and  commence  the  attack,  which  they  do 
unwillingly,  being  wearied  by  the  long  march  without 
refreshment,  while  their  bowstrings  have  been  slackened 
by  the  rain.  They  form,  however,  and  Avith  a  shout  let 
fly  their  quarrels.  They  are  answered  by  the  English 
archers  with  a  flight  of  cloth-yard  arrows,  under  which 
they  soon  break  and  begin  to  fall  back.  "  Kill  me  that 
rabble  ! "  cries  the  king  of  France.  The  French  chivalry, 
in  its  mad  pride,  tries  to  charge  over  the  Genoese.  Utter 
confusion  ensues,  and  the  French  army  becomes  a  strug- 
gling mass,  into  which  volley  after  volley  of  arrows  is 
poured  with  deadly  effect,  while  a  corps  of  Welsh  light 
infantry,  slipping  among  the  fallen  or  helplessly  jammed 
horsemen,  finds  the  joints  of  the  armour  with  its  knives. 
The  results  at  evening  are  a  plain  covered  with  the  bodies 
of  eleven  princes  and  twelve  hundred  knights,  besides 
men  of  the  meaner  sort  without  number.  The  effective 
range  of  the  long-bow  was  greater  than  that  of  the  fire- 
lock ;  its  discharge  was  far  more  rapid  than  that  of  a 
muzzle-loader  ;  as  it  required  to  be  drawn  to  the  ear, 
there  could  be  no  shooting  without  aim ;  the  eye  of  the 
archer  as  he  plucked  the  arrows  from  his  quiver  was  not 
taken  off  his  mark ;  there  was  no  smoke  to  hinder  his 
sight.  No  weapon  ever  did  more  execution.  For  a  cen- 
tury, at  the  least,  the  English  archery  was  supreme  in 


x  EDWARD   III  217 

war,  foreign  or  civil.  A  peasantry  comparatively  free 
and  trained,  trusted  with  effective  weapons,  a  compara- 
tive union  of  classes,  national  feeling  bred  of  national 
institutions,  and  comradeship  of  the  king  with  his  people 
formed  the  political  elements  of  the  war-power  which  won 
Crecy.  Villani  says  that  cannon  were  used  in  the  battle. 
He  is  probably  wrong,  but  they  came  in  at  this  time,  and 
were  presently  used  in  sieges.  The  cavalier  of  feudalism 
was  dismounted,  and  its  castle  wall  fell  down. 

At  Sluys  the  English  took,  by  boarding  or  hand-to-  1340 
hand  fighting,  the  whole  of  a  vastly  superior  French  fleet. 
This  was  almost  as  much  a  land  as  a  naval  action,  the 
enemy  being  at  anchor  in  his  port.  The  victory  over 
the  Spanish  fleet  was  not  less  brilliant  and  more  naval. 
Edward  paid  attention  to  his  navy,  and  the  maritime 
character  of  the  nation,  which  brought  with  it,  besides 
general  vigour  and  enterprise,  security  from  invasion  and 
exemption  from  standing  armies  with  their  political  effects, 
made  progress  during  this  reign. 

The  composition  of  the  armies  was  a  mixture  of  fast- 
receding  feudalism  with  the  advancing  system  of  national 
administration.  Tenants  of  the  crown  were  still  under 
the  feudal  obligation  of  bringing  their  retainers  to  the 
king's  standard.  The  national  militia  was  called  out 
under  the  statute  of  Edward  I.  by  commissions  of  array. 
These  were  home  forces,  but  the  men  once  called  out  were 
pressed  or  tempted  to  enlist  for  service  abroad.  Most 
of  the  troops,  however,  were  raised  by  contract,  either 
witli  warlike  nobles  who  enlisted  the  men  on  their  estates, 
or  with  professional  captains  like  the  condottieri  of  Italy. 
Enlistment  was  for  the  war  only.  All  yeomen  were 
practised  with  the  bow.  High  pay  was  drawn  by  the 


218  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

chiefs  both  for  themselves  and  for  their  men.  Thus 
national,  feudal,  and  professional  elements  were  blended 
in  Edward's  camp.  The  gaol  also  was  made  a  recruiting 
ground  in  these  as  in  much  later  times.  As  the  war  went 
on,  and  the  demand  for  military  skill  and  experience  in- 
creased, the  professional  captains  came  to  the  front,  sup- 
planting the  feudal  lords.  Among  the  famous  lieutenants 
of  Edward  III.,  if  the  Earl  of  Derby  was  a  grandee,  Manny, 
Chandos,  and  Calveley  were  simple  knights,  and  Knolles, 
according  to  some  chroniclers,  was  of  still  humbler  birth. 
Some  of  these  soldiers  of  fortune  came  home  rich  with 
spoils  and  built  mansions  wherein  to  tell  their  stories  of 
Sluys,  Crecy,  and  Poitiers. 

Of  ships  the  crown  had  but  few.  The  war  fleet  was 
raised  by  a  sort  of  naval  commission  of  array.  The  sea- 
men of  the  Cinque  Ports  were  its  core.  On  them 
rested  the  special  duty  of  maritime  defence.  In  return 
they  enjoyed  high  privileges  and  honours,  their  barons 
carrying  the  canopy  over  the  king  at  the  coronation. 
They  lived  always  in  the  face  of  maritime  danger  and 
were  perpetually  engaged  in  irregular  and  piratical  if 
not  in  regular  war.  Edward's  victories  at  Sluys  and 
over  the  Spaniards  brought  the  navy  to  a  high  pitch 
of  glory. 

1335  There  was  a  political  tendency  again  in  the  alliance 
with  the  manufacturing  democracy  of  Flanders  and 
its  dictator,  Van  Artevelde,  against  the  feudal  Count 
of  Flanders  and  the  feudal  monarchy  and  nobility  of 
France.  English  fleeces  fed  Flemish  looms,  and  wool 
was  king  then  as  cotton  is  king  now.  It  was  diploma- 
tist as  well  as  king,  for  it  gave  birth  to  the  Flemish 
alliance.  The  pikes  of  Flemish  burghers  and  mechanics 


x  EDWARD   III  219 

were  destined  to  win  over  the  French  chivalry  a  victory 
almost  as  startling  as  that  of  the  English  bow  at  Crecy, 
though  the  pike  in  the  hands  of  the  burgher  and  me- 
chanic failed  to  sustain  itself  like  the  bow  drawn  by  the 
yeoman.  It  was  in  attempting  to  transfer  the  allegiance 
of  Flanders  to  an  English  prince  that  Van  Artevelde  met  1345 
Jiis  doom  at  the  hands  of  a  mob.  Democracy,  as  yet,  has 
no  confidence  in  itself.  It  was  partly  to  satisfy  the 
demand  of  the  Flemish  burghers  for  the  political  shelter 
of  royalty  that  Edward  styled  himself  king  of  France. 
English  alliance  with  Flanders  was  the  counter-move  to 
the  French  alliance  with  Scotland. 

The  war  with  France  could  not  fail  to  stimulate  Eng- 
lish nationality.  English  instead  of  French,  hitherto 
dominant,  is  made  legally  the  language  of  state,  though 
the  French  still  clings  to  its  hold  on  the  jargon  of  the 
law.  English  literature  has  now  a  new  birth.  '  Wycliffe 
is  its  first  great  prose  writer.  Chaucer  is  its  first  great 
poet.  He  is  followed  by  Gower  and  Lydgate.  The 
poor  have  a  poet  in  Langland.  Popular  and  patri- 
otic ballads  express  the  rising  spirit  of  the  nation.  In 
the  ecclesiastical  sphere  also  nationality  prevails  and 
begins  to  shake  off  subjection  to  the  papacy.  The 
papacy  had  been  captured  by  the  French  monarchy  and 
placed  under  its  wing  in  a  huge  castle  of  corruption  at 
Avignon.  Popes  had  come  to  be  regarded  as  diplomatic 
tools  of  France.  Englishmen  said,  "If  the  pope  is  on 
the  side  of  France  the  pope's  master  is  on  our  side." 
Papal  intervention  is  treated  with  disdain.  The  pay- 
ment of  tribute  to  which  John  had  forced  the  nation  is 
renounced.  When  the  pope  lays  Flanders  under  an  in- 
terdict, the  king  sends  English  priests  who  cared  not 


220  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

for  the  interdict  to  perform  service.  By  the  statute  of 
1351  Provisors  an  end  is  put  legally  to  the  appropriation  of 
English  benefices  by  the  pope,  and  though,  through  the 
connivance  of  the  kings,  who  shared  the  booty  with  the 
popes,  the  statute  fails  of  its  full  effect,  it  shows  the  tem- 
per of  parliament.  It  will  presently  be  followed  by  the 
1353  statute  of  Prtfiinunire,  restricting  under  heavy  penalties 
appeals  to  Rome,  and  thus  cutting  off  the  main  stream 
of  her  lucre.  More  than  this,  there  is  a  general  move- 
ment, provoked  by  the  worldliness  and  vices  of  the 
clergy,  against  ecclesiastical  wealth  and  influence.  Jeal- 
ousy is  shown  of  the  engrossment  by  ecclesiastics  of  the 
great  offices  of  state.  Laymen  instead  of  ecclesiastics 
are  made  chancellors  and  heads  of  the  administration. 
Nor,  as  will  presently  be  seen,  does  the  anti-clerical  move- 
ment end  there. 

Poitiers  and  other  feats  of  arms  might  follow  Crecy  ; 
the  Black  Prince  might  win  in  French  fields  the  halo  of 
renown  which  still  surrounds  the  mail-clad  effigy  recum- 
bent on  his  stately  tomb.  His  companions  in  arms, 
Chandos,  Manny,  Knolles,  Calveley,  and  the  Captal  De 
Buch,  might  vie  with  the  exploits  of  their  leader,  and 
sweep  fortunes  from  plundered  and  bleeding  France. 
The  Round  Table  might  gather  round  the  warrior  king 
its  circle  of  chivalry,  nobler  at  all  events  than  a  circle  of 
Versailles  courtiers  or  of  old  grandees  invested  mainly 
by  their  rank  in  the  peerage  with  a  title  which  was 
denied  to  Nelson.  Castle,  manor  house,  and  cottage  in 
England  might  be  full  of  French  trophies  and  stories 
of  French  fields.  The  end,  nevertheless,  was  sure.  The 
conquest  of  France  was  a  wild  and  mischievous  dream. 
It  was  never  even  steadily  pushed  to  completion.  At 


x  EDWARD   III  221 

last,  the  enemy  having  learned  to  avoid  battles  in  the 
open  field,  it  degenerated  into  a  series  of  aimless  raids 
over  a  country  stripped  too  bare  to  feed  the  invader. 
Scotland  in  alliance  with  France  hung  always  on  the 
rear  of  England,  though  at-Nevill's  Cross  she  suffered  1346 
total  defeat,  and  the  capture  of  her  king.  The  exhaus- 
tion of  both  sides  was  expressed  by  truces,  during  which 
armies,  being  unpaid,  broke  up  into  bodies  of  banditti, 
free  companies  as  they  were  called,  which  pillaged  at 
random  and  did  not  spare  the  pope.  France  found  in 
Charles  V.  a  prudent  king,  in  Bertrand  Du  Guesclin  a 
soldier  skilful  in  the  war  of  posts.  Age  paralyzed  king 
Edward,  mortal  disease  his  heroic  son.  At  last,  of  all 
that  the  sword  and  the  bow  had  won,  nothing  but  the 
preposterous  claim  to  the  French  crown,  except  Calais, 
was  left.  Calais,  to  which  England  thenceforth  passion- 
ately clung,  had  value  as  commanding  the  Channel  in 
days  when  no  waters  were  safe  from  piracy.  Unfortu- 
nately it  proved  in  after  times  the  too  alluring  gate  for 
a  renewal  of  the  mad  scheme  of  conquest. 

The  politics  of  the  reign  consist  chiefly  in  stretches  of 
prerogative  on  the  part  of  the  king  to  obtain  money  for 
the  devouring  expenses  of  his  wars,  met  by  fitful  resist- 
ance and  affirmation  of  right  on  the  part  of  parliament. 
It  is  fair  to  remember  that  parliament  had  gone  with  the 
king  into  the  war,  and  that  it  was  ill-informed  and  ill-quali- 
fied to  measure  the  necessities  of  war  or  government.  It 
was  so  ill-informed  as  to  assume  that  there  were  more 
than  four  times  as  many  parishes  in  England  as  there 
were,  and  thus  to  over-rate  fourfold  the  produce  of  a  tax. 
It  was  haunted  by  a  belief  that  the  king  could  live,  or 
ought  to  live,  "  of  his  own,"  that  is,  of  the  domains  and 


222  THE   UNITED  KINGDOM  CHAP. 

proprietary  dues  of  the  crown,  which  were  by  this  time 
far  from  sufficing  to  defray  the  costs  of  government. 
The  king  was  reduced  to  such  straits  that  he  had  to  pawn 
his  crown,  to  become  bankrupt,  and  by  his  bankruptcy 
to  ruin  the  Bardi  and  Peruzzi,  the  two  great  financial 
houses  of  Florence.  He  tried  arbitrary  methpds  of  rais- 
ing money.  In  disregard  of  his  grandfather's  pledges  he 
tallaged  the  domain  towns.  He  empowered  commis- 
sioners to  receive  fines,  grant  pardons,  sell  permissions 
to  marry  the  wards  of  the  crown,  and  gather  money  by 
all  means  that  the  feudal  system  provided.  He  laid  his 
fiscal  grasp  upon  commerce,  which  was  still  in  a  com- 
paratively uncovenanted  state.  He  laid  imposts  espe- 
cially on  the  wool,  which  was  the  great  article  of  trade, 
with  a  value  almost  like  that  of  currency,  as  tobacco  once 
had  in  Virginia.  When  he  had  been  prevented  from 
raising  the  money  by  a  direct  tax,  he  raised  it  by  tricky 
arrangements  with  the  merchant.  It  was  for  this 
purpose  that  he  insisted  on  having  all  the  wool  brought 
for  sale  to  a  particular  mart,  or  staple,  fixed  by  royal 
order ;  a  measure  which  is  held  to  have  combined  the 
king's  power  of  regulating  commerce  with  his  power  of 
licensing  fairs.  He  wrung  money  out  of  the  feudal  ward- 
ships, seizing  upon  those  of  mesne  lords  as  well  as  his 
own.  He  exacted  feudal  aids  for  knighting  his  sons. 
Fines  and  penalties  were  another  sinister  source  of  his 
revenue.  He  abused  purveyance,  the  oppressive  and 
hateful  privilege  of  taking  for  the  king  and  his  retinue 
wherever  he  went,  carts,  horses,  and  provisions  at  a  nomi- 
nal price,  which  was  apt  not  to  be  paid.  He  raised 
forced  levies  and  compelled  the  district  to  equip  them. 
He  seems  to  have  tried  not  only  special  dealings  with  the 


x  EDWARD   III  223 

merchants,  but  assemblies  of  merchants,  more  manageable 
than  parliament,  to  lend  a  colour  of  authority  for  his 
encroachments.  For  failing  to  supply  his  financial  needs, 
he  cashiered  and  persecuted  his  chief  minister,  Archbishop  i:540 
Stratford,  and  almost  drove  him  to  play  the  part  of 
Becket  long  after  date.  With  Stratford  he  waged  a  sort 
of  pamphlet  war,  which  showed  that  public  opinion  was 
alive.  One  consequence  of  the  quarrel  was  the  assertion 
by  the  lords  of  the  right  to  be  tried  only  by  their  peers. 
The  parliament  struggled  with  increasing  obstinacy  and 
success  as  the  tide  of  the  king's  fortunes  ebbed,  and  with 
it  his  personal  ascendancy  and  the  hold  over  the  military 
aristocracy,  which  had  made  him  almost  irresistible  for 
a  time.  Theoretically  the  parliament  not  only  asserted 
but  enlarged  its  rights.  The  king  finally  renounced  the 
prerogatives  of  tallage  and  maletolt,  that  is,  of  taxing  the 
domain  towns  and  of  laying  imposts  on  merchandise, 
thereby  rounding  off  in  law  at  least  the  system  of  parlia- 
mentary taxation.  He  promised  redress  of  the  abuses  of 
purveyance  and  impressment.  He  formally  submitted  to 
examination  of  his  expenditure,  to  control  in  the  appoint- 
ment of  his  ministers,  and  to  their  being  called  to  a  regu- 
lar account  at  the  opening  of  the  parliamentary  session. 
He  accepted  in  fact  the  leading  principles  of  responsible 
government.  But  he  seems,  when  pressed  by  his  neces- 
sities, to  have  broken  through  his  engagements  ;  once  he 
shamelessly  cancelled,  when  parliament  had  risen,  his 
assent  to  a  remedial  statute,  avowing  that  he  had  been 
dissembling  for  the  purpose  of  expediting  business.  So 
brilliant  a  personage  it  was  difficult  to  bind.  He  seems, 
however,  to  have  been  pretty  ready  to  assent,  nominally 
at  least,  to  anything  except  restrictions  on  his  power  of 


224  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

raising  money.  Devoted  to  war  and  glory,  he  had  hardly 
any  domestic  policy  except  that  of  drawing  supplies. 

It  is  due  to  Edward  III.  at  the  same  time  to  say  that, 
whether  it  were  for  the  purpose  of  his  exchequer  or  with 
a  larger  and  better  policy,  he  did  his  best  to  foster 
trade.  By  war  no  one  can  really  make  trade  nourish, 
since  trade  depends  on  wealth,  which  is  destroyed  by  war. 
Edward  made  trade  flourish,  not  by  his  wars  but  by 
his  commercial  diplomacy,  especially  by  his  connection 
with  the  Flemish  looms  and  by  his  efforts  to  restrain 
piracy  on  the  seas.  He  was  repaid  by  the  strength  with 
which  commerce  supplied  him  in  his  wars.  Commercial 
wealth  is  increasing,  leading  merchants  are  becoming 
great  men.  Instead  of  mere  exporters  of  the  raw  mate- 
rial, the  English  are  becoming  manufacturers  of  wool. 
1363  Sir  Henry  Picard,  a  vintner,  entertains  at  his  London 
mansion  the  king  of  England  and  two  captive  kings  with 
a  sumptuous  feast,  followed  by  gambling  on  a  grand  scale. 
The  statute-book  is  full  of  commercial  legislation,  mostly 
protectionist  and  meddling,  and  therefore  unsound ;  yet 
perhaps  not  so  manifestly  unsound  or,  it  might  be,  so 
wholly  devoid  of  economical  justification  in  those  days 
as  it  would  be  in  ours.  Forestallers  and  regraters  rightly 
viewed  were  but  middlemen,  yet  their  tricks  may  have 
obscured  the  right  view. 

Parliament  is  in  full  activity.  More  than  seventy  writs 
for  its  meeting  are  issued  during  the  fifty  years  of  the 
reign.  Its  organization  is  being  completed.  It  is  now 
definitively  divided  into  the  two  Houses,  Lords  and  Com- 
mons, which  sit  in  separate  chambers.  There  are  confer- 
ences between  the  Houses.  Parliament  is  opened  with  a 
sermon  from  the  chancellor,  when  he  is  an  ecclesiastic, 


x  EDWARD   III  225 

something  like  the  king's  speech  of  later  clays.  Debate 
seems  to  be  becoming  oratorical  ;  at  least  Wycliffe  puts 
into  the  mouths  of  politicians  highly  figurative  invective 
against  the  wealth  and  immunities  of  the  clergy.  The 
House  of  Commons  has  its  Speaker,  to  be  its  mouthpiece 
in  addressing  the  crown  and  to  preside  over  its  own  dis- 
cussions. It  secures  its  legislative  authority  by  insisting 
that  its  petitions,  the  assent  of  the  crown  to  which  it  makes 
a  condition  precedent  of  its  grant  of  supplies,  shall  be  em- 
bodied in  regular  statutes,  so  as  to  preclude  surreptitious 
alteration.  It  is  consulted  by  Edward  III.  on  questions 
of  peace  and  war  to  an  extent  to  which  it  is  not  directly 
consulted  on  such  questions  at  present ;  though  the 
king's  object  was  to  make  it  responsible  for  the  cost  of 
his  enterprises,  as  by  a  certain  coyness  in  taking  advan- 
tage of  its  privilege  it  showed  itself  aware.  It  is  gener- 
ally active  in  legislation.  It  reforms  the  abuses  of  the 
judiciary,  both  national  and  local,  into  which  in  those  1353- 
days  of  supposed  romance  corruption  was  always  creep- 
ing, and  supplies,  perhaps,  the  surest  remedy  to  the  evil 
by  voting  sufficient  salaries  to  the  judges.  It  enacts  that 
sheriffs  whose  abuse  of  their  office  is  a  perpetual  subject  1357 
of  complaint  shall  not  be  appointed  for  a  longer  time  than 
a  year.  To  purge  itself  of  jobs  committed  under  cover 
of  legislation  it  forbids  the  election  of  lawyers  as  knights 
of  the  shire.  It  excludes  sheriffs,  perhaps  for  a  similar 
reason.  It  obtains  the  sanction  of  the  crown  to  a  treason 
law,  strictly  denning  the  offence,  which,  while  it  remained  1352 
in  effect,  was  one  of  the  great  safeguards  of  liberty. 
Royal  judges  had  been  construing  doubtful  acts  or  loose 
words  as  treason,  which  entailed  forfeiture  of  estate  to 
the  king.  The  commons  show  themselves  distinctly  con- 

VOL.  I  — 15 


226  THE  UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

scions  of  their  representative  character,  telling  the  king 
that  they  must  consult  their  constituents  before  agreeing 
to  his  demands.  There  is  a  tendency  to  complete  amal- 
gamation between  the  two  elements  of  the  House  of 
Commons,  the  knights  and  the  burghers,  knights  being 
elected  for  towns.  There  is  also  a  tendency  to  alliance 
between  the  lay  lords  and  the  commons  against  the  cleri- 
cal element  which  predominated  in  the  Lords'  House. 

At  the  same  time  the  House  of  Commons  showed 
plainly  that  it  was  an  organ  of  the  governing  and  em- 
ploying class.  Labour  having  become  scarce,  and  its 
price  having  risen  after  the  decimation  of  the  labourers 
by  the  fearful  ravages  of  the  Black  Death,  parliament 
1349  passed  an  act,  the  first  of  a  series,  to  regulate  wages  and 
compel  the  labourer  to  work  at  the  old  rates.  The  notion 
that  the  regulation  was  impartial,  and  a  proof  that  the 
economical  and  social  policy  of  those  days  was  in  a  higher 
spirit  than  ours,  is  manifestly  absurd,  when  the  avowed 
object  of  the  statute  is  to  prevent  the  demand  for  exces- 
sive wages,  and  when  the  penalties  are  imposed  only  on 
the  labourer  for  demanding  higher  wages  than  the  statute 
allows,  not  on  the  employer  for  giving  lower.  A  subse- 
quent statute  indeed  imposed  a  penalty  on  the  employer  ; 
but  it  was  for  giving  wages  above,  not  for  giving  them 
below,  the  legal  standard.  The  statutes  of  Labourers 
were  accompanied  by  sumptuary  laws,  ostensibly  to  re- 
press luxury,  but  in  reality,  it  is  probable,  as  much  with  a 
view  to  preserving  the  distinction  of  classes,  and  prevent- 
ing the  burgher  or  yeoman  from  treading  on  the  gentle- 
man's heel. 

Taxation  has  been  passing  from  the  rude  feudal  sys- 
tem of  tallage,  carucage,  and  scutage,  to  the  simpler  and 


x  EDWAKU   III  227 

more  modern  form  of  a  subsidy  or  property  tax,  granted  by 
parliament  and  levied  on  a  regular  assessment,  together 
with  duties  on  wool  and  customs  on  merchandise.  The 
change  could  not  fail,  besides  its  fiscal  advantages,  to 
facilitate  the  political  action  of  the  assembly  by  which 
the  grants  were  made,  and  which  was  enabled  to  control 
government  by  a  regular  bargain  for  redress  as  the  con- 
dition of  supply.  Taxation,  as  it  were,  showed  a  front 
against  which  reform  might  move.  The  nation  was  en- 
abled to  measure  its  burdens  and  to  see  what  a  policy  cost. 
The  awkward  practice,  however,  remained  of  granting 
subsidies  in  kind,  the  tenth  sheaf,  the  tenth  lamb,  and  the 
tenth  fleece,  as  tithes  were  taken  till  recent  times. 

To  Edward  or  his  ministers  belongs  the  credit  of  com- 
pleting the  institution  partly  introduced  by  Henry  III. 
and  Edward  I.,  of  justices  of  the  peace,  of  which  Coke 
says  that  "the  whole  Christian  world  hath  not  its  like." 
The  justice  took  the  place  of  the  hundred  court.  When 
soldiers,  some  of  them  originally  convicts,  were  returning 
from  raids  in  France,  the  justices  of  the  peace  were  sure 
to  have  work  enough. 

The  last  years  of  the  reign  were  sad.  The  conquests 
were  lost.  The  Black  Prince,  not  satisfied  with  France 
as  a  field  of  bootless  adventure,  had  carried  his  Quixotic  1367 
arms  into  Spain  as  the  ally  of  the  tyrant  Pedro  the  Cruel, 
whom  his  fancy  seems  to  have  invested  with  the  character 
of  a  representative  of  legitimate  right.  He  had  won  a 
barren  victory,  tasted  of  a  tyrant's  ingratitude,  lost  half 
his  army  by  disease,  and  ruined  his  own  health.  The 
victor  of  Poitiers  and  Navarette  came  home  to  England  1375 
to  die.  Philippa,  Edward's  noble  consort,  the  light  of  his 
court  and  camp,  whose  intercession  saved  him  from  the 


228  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

1369  disgrace  of  hanging  the  burghers  of  Calais,  Avas  dead ;  and 
her  place  at  Edward's  side  was  profaned  by  the  harlot 
Alice  Ferrers.  The  princes  in  whose  hands  the  king's 
policy  had  accumulated  the  great  fiefs  would,  he  fondly 
hoped,  become  pillars  of  the  throne.  This  family  compact 
was  to  be  exalted  and  strengthened  by  the  introduction 

1337  of  the  high  title  of  Duke.  But  the  result  was  a  crop  of 
ambitious  rivalries,  rather  than  loyal  support ;  and  the 
train  was  laid  for  jars,  out  of  which  came  fierce  family 
feuds,  and  at  last  dynastic  Avar. 

John  of  Gaunt,  Duke  of  Lancaster,  Edward's  fourth 
son,  by  marriage  with  his  kinswoman,  Blanche,  had  suc- 
ceeded to  the  earldoms  and  the  vast  possessions  of  the 
house  of  Lancaster  ;  to  these  by  a  second  marriage  he 
added  an  imaginary  claim  to  the  kingdom  of  Castile  and 
Leon,  his  attempts  to  assert  which  cost  the  country  dear. 
When  the  king  was  sinking  into  dotage,  and  when  the 
Black  Prince  Avas  dying  and  leaving  only  one  child  as 

1376  his  heir,  Lancaster  seized  the  government;  not,  it  was 
suspected,  Avithout  still  more  ambitious  designs.  He 
affected  religious  or  at  least  anti-clerical  popularity,  and 
though  himself  a  loose  liver  as  well  as  a  political  intriguer 
formed  an  alliance  with  Wycliffe  and  the  religious  re- 
formers, Avhile  he  courted  the  harlot,  Alice  Ferrers. 
His  attacks  Avere  specially  directed  against  William 
of  Wykeham,  Bishop  of  AVinchester,  a  characteristic 
figure  of  the  age,  bishop,  minister  of  state,  and  architect 
royal,  the  founder  of  NGAV  College  and  Winchester 
School,  the  builder  of  Windsor  Castle,  and  the  most 
respectable  of  the  prelate  statesmen  of  his  day.  The 
Black  Prince  dragged  himself  from  his  sick  bed  to  lend  his 
authority  to  reform  and  to  secure  the  right  of  his  child. 


x  EDWARD   III  229 

The  Good  Parliament,  as  the  Speaker  of  which  Peter  1376 
De  La  Mare  won  renown,  drove  the  Lancastrians  from 
power,  banished  Alice  Ferrers  from  the  court,  and  in 
arraigning  the  chief  instruments  of  corruption,  Lord  Lati- 
mer  the  chamberlain  and  Lyons  the  financial  agent,  won 
for  parliament  the  momentous  power  of  impeachment. 
Lyons  did  not  want  the  effrontery  to  send  a  large  bribe 
to  the  Black  Prince,  which  the  Black  Prince  returned. 
The  Good  Parliament  also  insisted  on  other  reforms, 
notably  on  one  which  lay  at  the  root  of  all,  the  free 
election  of  knights  of  the  shire,  untrammelled  by  the 
dictation  of  the  sheriff,  through  which  Lancaster  had  no 
doubt  been  packing  the  House  of  Commons.  A  demand 
for  the  enforcement  of  the  statute  of  Labourers  at  the 
same  time  betrayed  the  class  character  of  the  assembly. 
After  the  death  of  the  Black  Prince,  Lancaster  contrived 
to  pack  a  new  House  of  Commons,  and  the  work  of  the 
Good  Parliament  was  undone.  The  death  of  the  king,  in  1377 
whose  name  the  misgovernment  was  carried  on,  broke  up 
the  conspiracy  of  corruption,  put  Alice  Ferrers  once  more 
to  flight,  and  opened  a  new  scene. 


CHAPTER   XI 

RICHARD   II 
BORN  1366;  SUCCEEDED  1377;  DEPOSED  1399 

are  drawing  towards  the  end  of  the  middle  age. 
In  England  this  is  the  dawn  of  the  Renaissance,  while 
in  Italy  the  sun  is  high.  Chaucer's  joyful  note  is  heard 
like  that  of  the  lark  heralding  the  day.  In  the  statutes 
of  William  of  Wykeham  for  his  college  we  find  a  care 
for  the  teaching  of  grammar,  which  has  been  generally 
held  to  indicate  dawning  regard  for  classical  education. 
Gothic  art  has  reached  the  last  of  its  successive  phases 
of  beauty. 

The  religious  part  of  the  medieval  organization  has 
given  way ;  the  faith  which  sustained  it  has  been  growing 
weak,  and  ceasing  to  elevate  character  or  inspire  noble 
action.  The  church  shows  in  increasing  measure  the  evil 
effects  of  political  establishment  and  wealth.  The  clergy 
have  become  worldlings,  imitators  of  lay  luxury,  attire, 
and  sports.  Of  the  bishops,  about  the  best  are  Courtenay 
and  Wykeham,  and  these  are  not  spiritual  fathers,  but 
worthy  statesmen.  If  the  episcopate  had  ever  been  the 
serf's  door  to  high  place,  it  was  so  no  longer,  for  the  bish- 
oprics were  filled  by  rank  and  family  interest.  Chaucer's 
"  Poor  Parson "  is,  like  Rousseau's  "  Vicaire  Savoyard," 

230 


CHAP,  xi  RICHARD   II  231 

evidently  an  ideal  and  a  rebuke  to  the  reality.  The  friars, 
once  the  best,  are  now  worst  of  all.  Their  ascetic  men- 
dicancy has  sunk  to  mendicancy  without  the  asceticism. 
They  have  become  peddlers  of  false  relics,  vendors  of 
indulgences  and  spells,  casuistical  corrupters  of  morality, 
and  low  agents  of  intrigue  and  conspiracy.  Society  in 
England  has  been  demoralized  by  the  French  wars,  every- 
where it  has  been  shaken  by  the  Black  Death. 

The  Pope  has  been  sinking  from  the  position  of  a  su- 
preme and  impartial  head  of  Latin  Christendom,  which  he 
once  asserted,  into  that  of  a  vassal  of  France.  He  has  been 
deserting  the  chair  of  St.  Peter  and  in  his  unhallowed  1306 
retreat  at  Avignon  amassing  wealth  by  sale,  more  flagrant 
than  ever,  of  ecclesiastical  justice  with  its  complicated 
chicaneries,  and  by  increased  abuse  of  his  assumed  privi- 
lege of  appointing  to  bishoprics  and  benefices.  The  great 
schism  in  the  papacy  comes  to  complete  its  degradation.  1378 
The  papacy  once  professed  to  reform  the  kingdoms  of  the 
earth.  The  kingdoms  of  the  earth  are  now  called  to 
reform  the  papacy.  In  England  national  spirit  has  risen 
against  the  pope  and  all  that  belongs  to  him.  His  demand 
for  the  arrears  of  the  tribute  due  to  him  as  sovereign  of 
England  in  virtue  of  the  surrender  of  the  kingdom  by 
John  has  been  met  with  proud  and  unanimous  refusal. 
There  has  been  a  movement  against  the  employment  of 
ecclesiastics  in  offices  of  state.  There  are  ominous  symp- 
toms of  a  desire  to  lay  hands  on  the  useless  wealth  of  the 
church.  It  seems  that  England  is  beginning  to  detach 
herself  from  the  papal  confederation. 

Wycliffe  appears  upon  the  scene,  a  preacher  not  only 
of  spiritual  reform,  but  of  ecclesiastical  revolution,  per- 
haps in  his  own  despite  of  social  revolution  also.  He  was 


232  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

a  professor  of  theology  and  religious  philosophy  at  Oxford, 
famous  in  his  time,  and  thought  worthy  to  be  ranked  with 
the  great  schoolmen.  He  forms  round  him  a  company  of 
young  and  ardent  disciples,  whom  he  calls  his  Poor  Priests, 
1378  and  whom  he  sends  forth  to  combat  the  malignant  influence 
of  the  degraded  friars  and  restore  the  life  of  religion. 
The  boldness  of  Wycliffe  and  his  disciples  as  doctrinal 
innovators  is  astonishing.  They  are  in  advance  not  only 
of  their  own,  but  of  later  times,  almost  of  the  present. 
They  assailed  the  idolatry  of  the  Mass  and  the  sacraments 
generally,  the  validity  of  holy  orders  without  personal 
grace,  the  celibacy  of  the  clergy,  vows  of  chastity,  auricu- 
lar confession,  the  use  of  exorcisms  and  benedictions,  pur- 
gatory, indulgences,  prayers  for  particular  dead  persons, 
pilgrimages,  and  image- worship.  "This  new  and  pesti- 
lent sect,"  says  a  reactionary  bishop  in  founding  a  college 
for  the  defence  of  orthodoxy,  "  attacks  all  the  sacraments 
and  all  the  possessions  of  the  church."  It  attacked  the 
possessions  of  the  church  in  attacking  the  sacraments,  on 
the  belief  in  which  the  power  and  wealth  of  the  church 
depended.  The  wealth  and  secularism  of  the  clergy 
were  the  objects  of  Wycliffe's  direct  hostility.  He  was  a 
reformer  rather  than  an  apostle ;  his  hand  held  the  fan 
which  purged  the  threshing  floor  rather  than  the  torch 
which  kindles  religious  love.  He  who  wishes  to  change 
mankind  must  bring  to  bear  a  new  motive  power.  Wyc- 
liffe's system  lacked  a  positive  doctrine  like  Luther's 
Justification  by  Faith,  Calvin's  Predestination,  Wesley's 
Love  of  the  Saviour.  It  lacked,  also,  the  wings  of  print- 
ing to  waft  its  message  abroad.  The  movement,  there- 
fore, came  and  departed  like  the  shock  of  an  ecclesiastical 
earthquake.  The  translation  of  the  Bible  was  its  chief 


xi  RICHARD   II  233 

fruit,  and  most  momentous  as  giving  an  appeal  from 
priestly  authority  to  the  Word  of  God.  But  it  had  a 
social  as  well  as  a  religious  side,  and  in  this  way  took 
immediate  and  terrible  effect. 

The  boy  Richard  came  to  a  throne  still  strong  and  1377 
gilded  with  the  lingering  rays  of  the  sun  of  Crecy,  but  to 
a  bad  and  dangerous  state  of  things.  The  government 
was  discredited  by  defeat  ;  the  French  had  been  attacking 
the  southern  ports  ;  the  finances  were  embarrassed.  The 
social  world  was  out  of  joint.  The  author  of  "Piers  1362 
Ploughman"  is,  no  doubt,  an  honest  though  querulous 
and  unmelodious  censor.  He  describes  a  period  of  greed, 
oppression,  knavery,  and  bad  relations  between  classes. 
Scarcely  had  the  new  reign  begun  when  there  came  on  a 
social  storm,  in  which  it  seemed  for  a  moment  that  society 
would  be  wrecked.  The  strikes  and  industrial  disturb- 
ances of  England  at  the  present  day,  though  they  alarm 
us,  are  mild  and  little  dangerous  compared  with  the  Revolt 
of  the  Serfs.  For  a  parallel  to  this,  to  the  Jacquerie  of 
France,  or  the  Peasants'  War  in  Germany,  we  must  look 
to  the  French  Commune,  or  imagine  Anarchism  for  an 
hour  triumphant  and  giving  effect  to  its  dreams  of  havoc. 
It  seems  that  the  system  of  villainage,  that  is,  of  hold- 
ings under  a  lord,  paid  for  by  forced  labour,  had  been 
going  out.  Forced  labour  was  found  to  be  little  worth, 
and  the  villain  wandered  from  the  manor  to  the  town,  or 
perhaps  to  the  camp.  The  system  of  hired  labour  had 
been  coming  in.  When  by  the  scarcity  of  labourers  after 
the  Black  Death  wages  were  raised,  a  parliament  of  em- 
ployers had  tried  by  statutes  of  Labourers  to  keep  wages 
down  to  old  rates.  This  failed,  as  it  was  sure  to  fail. 
The  land-owners,  in  what  way  does  not  clearly  appear,  used 


234  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

their  manorial  rights  to  put  the  screw  on  the  villains. 
1381  The  villains  rose  in  revolt.  This  is  deemed  the  probable 
cause  of  the  outbreak,  so  far  as  the  putbreak  was  economi- 
cal. The  demand  of  the  insurgents  accordingly  was  for 
the  abolition  of  villainage  and  for  the  allotment  of  land  at 
a  fixed  price,  so  that  they  in  some  measure  anticipated  the 
agrarianism  of  the  present  day.  In  Kent,  where  their 
revolt  broke  out,  villainage  did  not  exist.  But  their 
demand  was  necessarily  for  something  tangible ;  they 
could  not  have  framed  a  petition  for  a  new  heaven  and 
a  new  earth.  It  was  a  time  of  general  discontent  and 
unrest  among  the  labouring  classes.  The  agitation  was 
likely  to  be  increased  by  the  presence  of  a  number  of 
disbanded  soldiers,  against  whom  the  harsh  vagrancy  law 
which  accompanied  the  statute  of  Labourers  may  have 
been  partly  directed,  and  who  would  bring  back  high 
hearts  from  fields  of  victory.  Perhaps  they  brought  also 
tidings  of  the  revolt  of  the  commons  in  Flanders  and 
of  the  French  Jacquerie.  A  wave  of  social  disturbance 
seems  to  have  been  sweeping  over  Europe.  The  sound- 
ness of  the  manorial  system  depends  upon  the  presence  of 
the  lord  and  his  performance  of  his  duties  to  his  depend- 
ents ;  and  the  English  landlord  had  been  drawn  away  to 
the  camp  of  Edward  and  to  his  gay  court,  as  the  French 
nobility  were  afterwards  drawn  away  to  Versailles,  proba- 
bly with  a  similar  result  to  their  local  connections  and 
influence.  The  bishops  were  politicians  and  courtiers, 
neglecting  their  dioceses,  sometimes  hardly  going  near 
them  ;  and  the  sequel  showed  that  neither  the  parochial 
clergy  nor  the  monks  had  retained  their  hold  upon  the 
people.  The  monks  had  in  fact  by  their  impropriations 
of  tithes  greatly  impaired  the  parochial  system,  while 


xi  RICHARD   II  235 

between  the  abbeys  and  the  people,  especially  in  the 
towns,  petty  litigation  about  rights  and  franchises  was 
always  going  on. 

There  was,  perhaps,  a  deeper  cause  than  these,  and  one 
which  comes  more  home  to  us  at  the  present  day.  Wyc- 
liffe  had  preached  a  spiritual  communism  of  a  rather  mys- 
tical kind.  This  became  material  communism  in  the 
preachings  of  his  coarser  and  more  violent  disciples,  such 
as  the  clerical  demagogue,  John  Ball,  whose  text  was 

When  Adam  delved  and  Eve  span, 
Who  was  then  the  gentleman? 

A  sense  of  the  unjust  inequalities  of  the  human  lot,  and  a 
desire  to  redress  them  by  force,  had  then  taken  posses- 
sion of  the  minds  of  the  masses.  Gospel  communism  pre- 
sented an  ideal.  The  people  seem  to  have  dreamed  of 
nothing  less  than  the  extermination  of  the  governing  class 
and  the  destruction  of  all  existing  titles  to  property,  so 
that  the  world  might  be  again  as  in  the  days  of  Adam 
and  Eve.  Plan  of  political  reform  or  reconstruction  they 
had  none.  While  they  massacred  and  plundered  the 
gentry  and  the  hierarchy,  whom  they  regarded  as  their 
oppressors,  they  professed  a  childlike  loyalty  to  the  king. 
They  even,  with  the  usual  inconsistency  and  infirmity  of 
mobs,  wished  to  have  gentlemen  for  their  leaders  and 
forced  one  or  two  to  take  that  part.  The  political  watch- 
words of  the  insurgents  were  not  uniform.  Some  shouted 
for  Lancaster,  others  thirsted  for  his  blood.  There  was 
a  miscellaneous  alliance  of  all  the  elements,  general  and 
local,  of  peasant  discontent. 

A  poll  tax,  the  desperate  resort  of  a  government  in   1330 
financial  despair,  brought  the  evils  of  the  administration 


236  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

home  to  the  feelings  of  all.      An  insult  offered  by  one 
of  the  assessors  to  the  daughter  of  Wat  Tyler,  a  workman 

1381  of  Kent,  is  supposed  to  have  been  the  spark  which  fired 
the  mine.  The  rapidity  with  which  the  conflagration 
spread  through  the  south,  east,  and  north  showed  that 
the  hearts  of  the  peasantry  were  in  a  highly  inflammable 
state,  since  concert  was  hardly  possible  where  there  was 
so  little  of  mutual  intelligence  and  communication  was  so 
slow.  An  appalling  reign  of  havoc,  murder,  and  incen- 
diarism ensued.  Lawyers  as  the  guardians,  and  legal 
documents  as  the  muniments,  of  the  established  order  of 
things,  were  the  special  objects  of  rebel  fury.  No  lawyer 
was  spared.  The  very  possession  of  law  papers  and  even 
of  pen  and  ink  was  death.  A  large  body  of  insurgents 
under  Wat  Tyler  made  themselves  masters  of  London, 
the  gates  of  which  were  .opened  to  them  by  a  sympathizing 
populace,  and  there  revelled  in  atrocities  which  antici- 
pated the  Faubourg  St.  Antoine.  Sudbury,  the  chancel- 
lor, was  butchered  with  double  gusto,  being  at  once  the 
head  of  the  law  and  an  archbishop.  Authority  was  para- 
lyzed. The  garrison  of  the  Tower,  six  hundred  men-at- 
arms  and  as  many  archers,  tamely  allowed  the  rioters  to 
enter  the  fortress  and  insult  the  king's  mother  in  her  own 
chamber.  If  we  can  believe  the  common  account,  the 
capital  of  the  country  was  saved  by  the  courage,  presence 
of  mind,  and  decision  of  a  king  of  fourteen,  who,  at  the 
critical  moment,  rode  forward  and  cast  the  spell  of  royalty 
over  the  wavering  minds  of  a  savage  and  masterless 
crowd. 

Richard  appeased  the  peasants  and  persuaded  them  to 

1381  disperse  by  granting  them  charters  of  manumission,  a 
measure  irregular,  of  course,  since  the  king  could  not  by 


xi  RICHARD   II  237 

himself  alter  the  law  of  property,  but  warranted  by  the 
crisis.  These  the  parliament  cancelled  by  a  unanimous  1381 
vote,  showing  once  more  that  it  represented  the  dominant 
class.  As  suddenly  as  the  vast  waterspout  had  formed,  it 
broke.  Authority  and  law  resumed  their  sway,  gathered 
up  the  relics  of  their  muniments,  and  plentifully  avenged 
with  the  gibbet  and  the  axe  their  overthrow  and  disgrace. 
Despenser,  the  warlike  Bishop  of  Norwich,  was  conspicu- 
ously active  in  repression,  maintaining  his  double  charac- 
ter by  shriving  a  prisoner  before  he  turned  him  off. 
Grindecobbe,  a  serf  of  St.  Albans,  shines  amid  the  wreck 
of  his  cause,  a  peasant  hero,  willing  to  give  his  life  for  the 
liberties  of  his  class.  The  peasants  did  not  succeed  in 
levelling  the  inequalities  of  the  human  lot.  How  far  they 
succeeded  in  getting  rid  of  villainage  is  a  moot  point 
among  economical  historians.  That  they  did  not  at  once 
gain  its  total  abolition  there  are  subsequent  facts  to  show. 
Legislative  war  continued  to  be  waged  by  a  parliament  of 
employers  against  the  emancipation  of  labour.  Statute 
after  statute  was  passed  fixing  the  rate  of  wages,  punish- 
ing all  who  took  more  than  that  rate,  and  striving  to  bind 
the  rural  labourer  to  the  soil  by  means  of  rigorous  va- 
grancy laws  and  prohibition  of  apprenticeship  to  trades. 
But  natural  forces  prevailed.  Escape  was  open  to  the 
serf  from  the  manor  to  the  town,  a  year's  residence  in 
which  barred  his  lord's  claim  to  him,  to  the  camp,  to  the 
sea.  The  superiority  of  paid  to  forced  labour  would  make 
itself  felt,  as  it  has  in  the  Southern  States  of  America, 
where  cotton  has  gained  by  the  abolition  of  slavery. 
Gradually  emancipation  was  brought  about.  At  last 
nothing  remained  of  villainage  save  the  legal  curiosities 
of  copyright. 


238  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

The  reign  of  Richard  II.  is  a  mystery,  sometimes  an 
impenetrable  mystery,  of  intrigue,  cabal,  and  treachery, 
showing  that  the  age  of  fealty  is  passed  and  that  religion 
is  losing  power.  The  general  key  is  the  growth  of  that 
oligarchy  of  magnates,  the  chief  of  them  belonging  to 
the  royal  family,  with  vast  possessions  and  high  titles, 
such  as  duke,  marquess,  and  earl,  which  overshadows  the 
old  baronage,  and  competing  for  possession  of  the  govern- 
ment crowds  the  scene  with  faction  and  intrigue.  The 
same  force  which  Richard  displays  in  confronting  Wat 
Tyler's  insurgent  host  he  displays  by  fits  in  after  life, 
but  it  alternates  with  weakness.  Kingship  in  his  teens 
had  spoilt  him.  His  impulses  were  wild.  In  the  middle 
of  his  wife's  funeral  in  Westminster  Abbey  he  strikes  a 
noble ;  he  challenges  four  lords  to  fight ;  he  assaults  a 
judge ;  kicks  a  nobleman's  cap  across  the  room.  His 
delicate  features,  hesitating  speech,  and  easily  flushing 
face,  are  the  outward  signs  of  a  temper  passionate  and 
irresolute.  Heir  of  a  splendid  throne,  he  is,  as  Shake- 
speare paints  him,  full  of  the  divinity  of  kings  and  inclined 
to  assume  the  god.  Probably  he  was  too  fond  of  pleasure 
and  pageantry.  He  was  young,  and  England  was  feeling 
the  voluptuous  influence  of  the  Renaissance.  He  had  bad 
companions  in  his  two  half-brothers  the  Hollands.  His 
household  was  probably  too  expensive.  That  he  had  ten 
thousand  guests  at  his  table  and  three  hundred  cooks 
must  have  been  a  calumnious  fable.  When  the  king's 
household  comprised  the  only  bodyguard  which  he  had,  it 
might  well  without  abuse  be  large.  Richard's  govern- 
ment paid  for  Crecy  and  Poitiers ;  it  inherited  a  disas- 
trous war,  with  its  ruinous  expenditure,  and  the  danger 
of  invasion.  It  seems  that  his  inclination  to  peace  with 


xi  RICHARD   II  239 

France,  wise  though  it  was,  and  a  redeeming  feature  in 
his  history,  injured  his  popularity  with  a  nation  inflamed 
by  conquest  and  ignorant  of  the  cost. 

Round  the  king  was  a  court  party  of  men  whom  the 
opposition  perhaps  with  truth  called  favourites,  though 
not  all  of  them  were  unworthy,  either  not  nobles  or  nobles 
of  secondary  rank,  such  as  De  Vere  and  Simon  Buiiey  in 
the  early  part  of  the  reign,  the  Earl  of  Wiltshire,  Bagot, 
Bussy,  and  Green  at  the  end.  These  men  strove  to  keep 
power  in  the  hands  of  the  king,  upon  whose  favour  they 
throve.  On  the  other  hand,  there  was  the  high  nobility, 
the  group  of  magnates  with  the  princes  of  the  blood  at 
their  head,  with  their  grand  titles,  with  their  immense 
revenues,  with  hosts  of  retainers  in  their  livery,  full 
of  feudal  pride,  and  rendered  restlessly  ambitious  by 
the  game  of  conquest  played  on  the  French  board. 
The  contests  of  these  oligarchical  groups  for  ascend- 
ancy, their  hereditary  feuds,  cabals,  and  mutual  assas- 
sinations, henceforth  fill  the  political  foreground,  though 
in  the  background  is  still  the  parliament.  It  was  the 
aim  of  these  men  to  keep  the  king  in  tutelage  as  long 
as  possible.  This  they  effected  through  a  parliament 
which  they  no  doubt  controlled.  When  the  king  had 
broken  through  the  leading  strings  they  formed  conspir- 
acies to  get  government  out  of  his  hands  and  into  their 
own.  At  first  the  Duke  of  Lancaster  was  their  leader,  he 
who,  in  the  last  reign,  had  intrigued  on  one  side  with  Lol- 
lardism,  and  on  the  other  side  with  Alice  Ferrers  and  her 
crew,  and  whose  sinister  movements  had  called  the  Black 
Prince  from  his  dying  bed  to  the  rescue  of  the  country 
and  his  heir.  Lancaster  seems  to  have  been  sickened  of 
patriotism  by  the  insurrection  of  the  serfs.  He  was, 


240  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

moreover,  diverted  from  the  English  field  of  his  ambition 
by  his  mad  attempts  to  win  the  crown  of  Castile.  His 
brother,  Gloucester,  took  his  place  as  leader  of  the  oli- 
garchical opposition.  In  the  combinations  and  revolutions 
which  ensue,  the  motives  of  the  actors  are  evidently  self- 
ish, and  treachery  is  the  order  of  the  day.  The  chancel- 
lor and  the  chief  minister  during  the  early  part  of  the  reign 
was  Michael  De  la  Pole,  who,  so  far  as  we  can  see  by  the 
light  of  imperfect  and  partial  chronicles,  may  have  done 
his  best  in  a  situation  full  of  military  disaster,  financial 
difficulty,  and  popular  discontent.  But  he  was  not  one  of 
the  high  nobility ;  his  father  had  been  a  merchant ;  he 
was  regarded  as  a  trader,  not  a  gentleman,  though  he 
had  fought  under  the  Black  Prince ;  and  to  the  grandees 
his  elevation  was  an  offence.  His  growing  wealth  gave  a 
handle  for  suspicion.  He  was  impeached  for  corruption 
and  deprived.  On  pretence  of  reforming  abuses,  of  which, 
especially  in  the  royal  household,  there  was  very  likely 
reason  to  complain,  the  king  was  practically  deposed  and 

1386  government  was  put  into  the  hands  of  an  oligarchical 
commission  with  Gloucester  at  its  head.  Richard, 
chafing  under  the  yoke,  organized  his  party  in  the  coun- 
try, distributed  his  White  Hart  badges,  and  obtained  a 
judicial  opinion  against  the  legality  of  the  commission. 
His  movement  was  premature  and  failed.  Hereupon  the 

1388  junto,  in  the  parliament  well  called  "  Merciless,"  impeached 
the  leading  friends  of  the  king  and  judicially  murdered 
such  of  them  as  it  could  get  into  its  hands,  thereby  stamp- 
ing its  own  character  and  motives. 

The  oligarchy  seemed  completely  triumphant,  but  it 
may  have  been  weakened  by  internal  jealousies  and  it 
would  almost  certainly  make  itself  odious  to  the  nation. 


xi  RICHARD   II  241 

Suddenly,  emerging   as   it  were    from  a  cloud,  without 
encountering  any  resistance,  Richard  resumed  his  power.    1389 
He  used  that  power  with  moderation,  abstained  from  re- 
prisals, and  for  eight  years  ruled  as  a  constitutional  and 
apparently  not  unpopular  king. 

At  the  end  of  that  time  Richard  lost  his  queen,  Anne  1394 
of  Bohemia,  whose  loss,  Froissart  says,  he  greatly  felt, 
since,  wedded  as  boy  and  girl,  they  dearly  loved  each 
other,  and  whose  affection  while  she  lived  may  have  in- 
fluenced him  for  good.  As  his  second  wife  he  took  Isa- 
bella, daughter  of  the  king  of  France.  The  alliance  may  1395 
have  inspired  him  with  French  ideas  of  royalty,  and  at 
the  same  time  exposed  him  to  popular  suspicion  of  too 
much  friendliness  to  France.  There  was  reason  to  believe 
that  the  unquiet  ambition  of  the  Duke  of  Gloucester,  the 
king's  uncle,  was  plotting  with  the  Earls  of  Arundel  and 
Warwick.  Richard  suddenly  arrested  them  all,  had 
Arundel  condemned  to  death,  Warwick  to  imprisonment  1397 
for  life.  Gloucester  he  sent  to  Calais,  where  the  duke 
immediately  and  conveniently  expired.  The  person  of 
Arundel,  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  the  earl's  brother, 
was  protected  by  his  order ;  but  the  pope  was  so  obliging 
as  to  send  him  into  exile  by  translating  him  to  the  nomi-  1397 
nal  see  of  St.  Andrews.  The  king  made  the  parliament 
reverse  all  the  acts  of  its  predecessors  directed  against  1397 
his  authority  and  his  friends.  Not  content  with  this  he 
proceeded,  in  an  access  apparently  of  absolutist  frenzy,  to 
overthrow  the  constitution.  He  made  parliament  vote 
him  a  revenue  for  life.  He  made  it  delegate  its  own 
powers  to  a  committee  of  eighteen  under  his  control. 
He  made  it  declare  the  deposition  of  Edward  II.,  which 
the  oligarchs  had  cited  to  him,  null,  and  repudiate  the 

VOL.  I  —  16 


242  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

deposing  power.  He  made  it  stretch  the  treason  law  so 
as  to  embrace  anything  that  could  be  called  compassing 
the  deposition  of  a  king.  He  made  it  grant  him  the  wool 
tax  for  life.  The  parliament  which  thus  committed  sui- 
cide had  no  doubt  been  packed  by  the  sheriffs,  by  whom 
the  county  elections  were  held;  a  peril  inherent  in  the 
constitution,  when  there  was  no  settled  authority  or 
strong  organ  of  public  opinion  to  guard  the  guardians  of 

1398  the  franchise.  Parliament  sat  surrounded  by  the  king's 
archers,  and  was  carried  away  to  the  borders  of  Cheshire, 
a  wild  district  and  a  palatinate  royal. 

Henceforth  Richard  reigned  as  a  despot,  and  from  the 
hatred  which  he  evidently  excited,  and  the  unanimous 
rejoicing  at  his  overthrow,  we  may  safely  conclude  that 
by  him  and  the  adventurers  whom  he  had  called  to  his 
councils  great  excesses  were  committed  and  the  country 
was  grievously  misgoverned.  He  had  still  reason  to  fear 
combinations  among  the  grandees.  To  get  rid  of  these  he 
took  advantage  of  a  mysterious  quarrel  between  the  Duke 
of  Hereford,  the  son  of  John  of  Gaunt,  Duke  of  Lancaster, 

1398  and  the  Duke  of  Norfolk,  by  first  allowing  a  trial  by  battle 
to  be  appointed  them,  and  then  banishing  them  both. 
Strangely  enough,  in  fixing  the  term  of  banishment  he 
discriminated  in  favour  of  his  really  formidable  enemy, 
the  Duke  of  Hereford,  heir  of  the  Lancaster  tradition 
of  opposition  to  the  crown,  and  one  of  the  five  appellant 
lords  who  in  the  Merciless  Parliament  had  brought  the 
friends  of  the  crown  to  the  block.  Yet  Richard  drove  the 
duke  to  despair  by  the  perfidious  confiscation  of  his  heri- 
tage. He  also  embroiled  himself  with  the  Percys,  whose 
earldom  of  Northumberland  was  a  petty  kingdom  in  the 
north,  the  last  genuine  relic  of  the  feudal  system,  with  its 


xi  RICHARD   II  243 

patriarchal  prince  holding  his  rude  court  at  Alnwick 
and  Warkworth.  Having  thus  charged  the  mine  under 
his  throne,  Richard  allowed  himself  at  the  critical  moment  1399 
to  be  lured  to  Ireland,  and  was  called  back  to  find  that  he 
had  lost  his  crown  to  the  profound  and  plausible  intriguer 
whose  wrath  he  had  defied,  and  who  in  his  absence  had 
landed  in  England. 

For  the  second  time  parliament  exercised  the  depos-  1399 
ing  power,  making  another  precedent  for  aftertimes  of 
parliamentary  resettlement  of  the  succession,  though  a 
nominal  satisfaction  might  be  afforded  to  legitimism  by 
Richard's  resignation.  The  principal  charges  against  him 
are  those  of  suspending  parliament  by  a  committee  of  his 
creatures,  tampering  with  the  elections  through  the  sher- 
iffs, and  putting  himself  above  the  control  of  parliament 
by  giving  himself  the  wool  tax  for  life.  He  was  also 
charged  with  abuse  of  purveyance  and  with  over-riding 
jury  trial  by  military  law.  Arbitrary  interference  with 
the  jurisdiction  of  the  ecclesiastical  courts  was  a  count,  no 
doubt,  inserted  to  requite  the  hierarchy  for  their  share  in 
the  revolution.  Henry  of  Lancaster  mounted  the  throne,  1399 
as  did  William  the  Third  after  him,  by  a  parliamen- 
tary and  revolutionary  title  wrapped  up  in  ambiguous 
language.  All  absolutist  acts  or  resolutions  and  all  new- 
fangled treasons  were  swept  away.  Whatever  coronation 
pomp  and  the  anointing  of  the  new  king  with  oil  miracu- 
lously given  to  St.  Thomas  Becket  in  his  exile  could  do 
to  make  up  for  the  lacking  halo  of  legitimacy  was  done. 
It  was  not  a  good  omen  for  religious  liberty  that  Archbishop 
Arundel,  the  chief  of  persecuting  high  churchmen,  led  the 
new  king  to  the  vacant  throne.  Richard  was  consigned  to  I399 
prison  at  Pornfret,  and  insurrection  in  his  favour  having 


244  THE  UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP,  xi 

broken  out  among  the  restless  magnates  of  his  party,  he 
ceased  to  live. 

That  "  all  the  water  in  the  sea  could  not  wash  the  balm 
from  an  anointed  king  or  the  breath  of  worldly  men  depose 
the  deputy  elected  by  the  Lord,"  was  no  doubt  Richard's 
sentiment.  It  appears  that  something  like  royalty  by 
divine  right  was  his  idea,  and  that  his  tendency  was  ab- 
solutist, though  we  must  make  allowance  for  the  circum- 
stances of  his  struggle  with  a  factious  and  unscrupulous 
oligarchy  which  sought  to  strip  the  monarchy  of  its  right- 
ful power,  not  in  the  interests  of  the  people,  but  of  its 
own.  Whatever  his  policy  was,  while  he  showed  fitful 
force  and  ability  he  was  utterly  lacking  in  steadiness  and 
self-control.  He  had  evidently  at  the  last  set  not  only 
the  oligarchy  but  the  nation  against  him.  In  the  early 
part  of  his  reign,  at  the  time  of  the  insurrection  of  the 
serfs,  he  appears  to  have  sympathized  with  the  people,  and 
he  certainly  deserves  the  credit  of  a  policy  of  peace  with 
France  and  of  much  needed  attention  to  the  affairs  of  dis- 
tracted Ireland. 


CHAPTER  XII 

HENRY  IV 
BORN  1366;  SUCCEEDED  1399;  DIED  1413 

"  TINEAS Y  lies  the  head  that  wears  a  crown."  Into 
no  mouth  better  than  into  that  of  Henry  IV. 
could  Shakespeare  have  put  those  words.  Henry  was 
a  strong,  enduring  man,  and  fearfully  were  his  strength 
and  endurance  tried.  Often  must  he  have  asked  himself 
whether  the  glittering  prize  which  he  had  won  was  worth 
the  price  which  he  had  paid  for  it,  and  which  was  terribly 
high  if,  as  we  can  hardly  doubt,  well  as  Pomfret  castle 
has  kept  its  secret,  it  was  by  his  order  that  Richard  died. 
He  mounts  the  throne  with  a  revolutionary  title,  while 
legitimacy  has  a  claimant  living  in  the  person  of  the 
infant  Edmund  Mortimer,  Earl  of  March,  the  representa- 
tive of  Lionel,  Duke  of  Clarence,  second  son  of  Edward 
III.,  whereas  John  of  Gaunt,  Henry's  father,  was  the 
fourth.  He  was  loaded  with  the  impracticable  promises 
of  reform  and  faultless  government  by  which  his  election 
had  been  gained.  From  Richard's  grave  rises  a  spectre 
lending  a  phantom  chief  and  the  name  of  royalty  to 
rebellion.  Henry  has  hardly  seated  himself  on  the  throne 
when  oligarchical  conspiracy  again  raises  its  hydra  heads.  1400 
His  popularity,  still  fresh,  puts  it  down,  and  the  con- 
spirators are  massacred  by  the  people,  a  strong,  though 
evil,  proof  of  the  national  demand  for  the  revolution. 

245 


246  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

But  when  his  popularity  is   no  longer   fresh,  the  hydra 

1403  rises  again  in  more  dangerous  forms.  The  Percys,  find- 
ing that  the  man  whom  they  had  raised  to  the  throne 
instead  of  being  their  creature,  as  they  thought,  meant 
to  be  king,  determined  to  dethrone  him.  Special  grounds 
of  discontent  also  they  may  have  had,  sufficient  to  set 
working  the  wayward  pride  of  a  great  lord  with  his 
worshippers  about  him  in  his  castle-palace  in  the  wild 
north.  They  ally  themselves  with  the  foreign  enemies 
of  the  realm  in  Scotland,  and  with  the  rebels  in  Wales. 
They  raise  the  Cheshire  archers,  who  still  cleave  to  the 
White  Hart.  Upon  the  bloody  and  perilous  day  of 

1403  Shrewsbury,  the  fell  commencement  of  a  long  era  of 
civil,  or  rather  of  aristocratic,  war,  Henry  fights,  not 
only  for  his  crown,  but  for  the  unity  of  the  realm.  On 
that  fatal  field,  where  the  bows  of  Crecy  and  Poitiers 
were  drawn  against  English  breasts,  and  the  forces  of 
the  nation  were  wasted  in  intestine  strife,  a  monument 
ought  to  stand  warning  England  against  faction. 

Nor  when  "  Harry  Hotspur's  spur  was  cold  "  was  that 
the  end.     Scrope,  Archbishop  of  York,  the  man  who  had 

1405  read  Richard's  resignation  to  parliament,  gets  up  another 
rebellion  in  the  north,  of  which  the  manifestoes  are  worth 
about  as  much  as  the  pronunciamento  of  a  rebel  aspirant 
to  the  presidency  of  a  South  American  Republic.  Scrope 
and  his  clerical  confederates  may  have  been  exasperated 
by  the  heavy  draughts  which  the  king  made  on  clerical 
revenues  ;  they  may  have  believed  his  government  to 
be  secretly  inclined  to  the  confiscation  of  church  prop- 
erty ;  or  the  archbishop,  a  political  and  military  prelate, 
may  simply  have  shared  the  mutinous  and  intriguing 

1405   spirit  of  the  oligarchy.     He  paid  the  forfeit  of  his  head. 


xii  HENRY   IV  247 

Since  the  growth  of  clerical  wealth  and  the  decline  of 
clerical  virtue,  the  criminal  immunities  of  the  clergy, 
a  great  proprietary,  hardly  less  secular  than  the  rest, 
had  become  more  than  ever  unreasonable,  and  had  begun 
to  be  less  respected.  At  the  beginning  of  this  reign 
they  had,  under  the  plea  of  pressing  danger,  been  sus- 
pended, and  priests  and  friars  had  been  put  to  death  for 
treason  without  serious  protest.  In  the  last  reign  arch- 
bishops and  bishops  who  mingled  in  the  political  fray 
and  whose  party  was  vanquished,  while  their  lay  fellow- 
conspirators  lost  their  heads,  had  only  been  stripped  of 
their  temporalities  and  banished  under  colour  of  trans- 
lation by  the  pope  to  mock  sees  in  Scotland  or  Ire- 
land. At  the  execution  of  Scrope,  a  shock,  of  course, 
ran  through  the  ecclesiastical  frame  ;  equally  as  a  mat- 
ter of  course  miracles  were  performed  at  his  tomb.  The 
king  had  to  make  formal  satisfaction  to  Rome.  A  little 
money,  it  seems,  had  to  be  used  in  that  quarter.  But  no 
moral  earthquake  ensued.  The  age  of  Becket  was  past. 
The  execution  was  a  strong  measure  for  that  day ;  to 
call  it  judicial  murder  seems  too  ecclesiastical.  Scrope 
was  taken  in  armed,  unprovoked,  and  criminal  rebellion. 
Whatever  might  be  his  avowed  aims,  there  could  be  no 
doubt  that  he  .and  his  party,  if  successful,  would  have 
dethroned  the  king.  The  trial  was  merely  formal,  and 
as  the  archbishop  was  a  peer  and  entitled  to  trial  by 
his  peers,  irregular  ;  but  there  could  be  no  doubt  as  to 
the  facts.  The  coat  of  mail  in  which  the  archbishop 
had  been  arrested  was  sent  to  the  pope,  with  the  ques- 
tion, "  Is  this  thy  son's  coat  ?  "  Nor  was  the  moral  force 
of  that  argument  touched  by  the  pope's  smart  answer, 
"An  evil  beast  hath  devoured  him."  Was  the  country 


248  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

to  be  devastated  and  dismembered  with  impunity  by 
political  intriguers  styling  themselves  apostles  of  the  re- 
ligion of  Christ  ? 

Against  the  last  strongholds  of  anarchic  feudalism  the 
king's  battering  cannon  served  him  well.  Artillery  was 
a  royal  arm,  and  its  ascendancy  added,  and  will  hence- 
forth add,  to  the  power  of  the  crown. 

At  the  same  time  there  was  smouldering  hostility  with 
France,  though  the  danger  from  that  quarter  was  pres- 
ently dissipated  by  French  faction.  There  was  chronic 
1402  war  with  the  Scotch,  who  at  Homildon  gave  the  English 
archer  another  opportunity  of  showing  his  ability  to 
encounter  cavalry  in  line,  and  the  superb  ascendancy 
of  his  arm.  The  king  himself  was  perpetually  being 
called  into  the  field  by  an  obscure  but  arduous,  and  for 
some  years  unsuccessful,  struggle  with  Welsh  disaffec- 
tion, which,  taking  advantage  of  the  civil  troubles,  raised 
its  head  again  in  the  wild  mountain  districts  and  found 
a  congenial  leader  in  Owen  Glendower,  a  redoubtable 
though  somewhat  bombastic  personage,  a  chief  thor- 
oughly Celtic,  in  whose  house  "  it  snowed  meat  and 
drink,"  and  about  whom  were  current  marvellous  pro- 
phecies of  Merlin.  Shakespeare  has  painted  Glendower 
well.  In  these  campaigns  the  king  shared  the  dangers 
and  hardships  of  the  common  soldier.  Europe  was  torn 
by  the  great  schism  in  the  papacy  and  Henry  was  called 
upon  to  labour  with  the  other  sovereigns  of  Christendom 
for  the  restoration  of  peace  and  unity  to  the  church. 
His  load  of  work,  administrative,  legislative,  diplomatic, 
and  military,  must  have  been  immense,  and  he  seems  to 
have  borne  it  alone ;  at  least  we  read  of  no  one  who 
shared  it  with  him.  Of  his  original  supporters  Arch- 


xii  HENRY   IV  249 

bishop  Arundel  remained  at  his  side  and  was  chancellor 
during  the  greater  part  of  his  reign ;  but  even  on  Arun- 
del's  loyalty  suspicion  fell,  and  his  aim  was  probably 
rather  that  of  a  reactionary  prelate  needing  royal  sup- 
port in  the  repression  of  heresy  and  defence  of  church 
wealth  than  that  of  a  devoted  minister  of  the  throne. 
Henry's  boys,  two  of  them  at  least,  were  madcaps  who 
gave  him  trouble  with  their  pranks;  and  between  him 
and  his  heir,  Prince  Henry,  there  was  for  some  time  an 
estrangement  which  must  have  added  to  his  burden  of 
cares,  even  if  the  prince  did  not  wish  too  early  to  wear 
the  crown.  To  shake  his  nerves,  assassination  as  well 
as  conspiracy  beset  him,  and  a  caltrop,  believed  to  be 
poisoned,  was  found  in  his  bed.  Nerves  perhaps  in  those 
days  were  not  so  sensitive  as  they  are  now,  yet  it  is  not 
wonderful  that  Henry's  health  should  have  broken  down 
in  middle  age.  It  may  be,  too,  that  remorse  gnawed 
him,  and  was  the  secret  cause  of  his  desire  to  expiate 
the  sins  of  his  life  by  ending  it  as  a  crusader  in  the  Holy 
Land.  It  seems  that  this  desire  was  unfeigned  and  that 
he  even  hoarded  money  for  its  accomplishment. 

Henry  of  Lancaster,  offspring  of  a  popular  house  and 
of  a  popular  revolution,  was  of  all  the  kings  in  the  mid- 
dle ages  the  most  constitutional,  and  of  the  powers  of  the 
medieval  parliament  his  reign  is  the  high- water  mark. 
The  promise  made  for  him  at  his  accession  by  Archbishop 
Arundel  of  a  reversal  of  the  arbitrary  ways  of  Richard 
was  faithfully  fulfilled.  He  studiously  courted  the  Com- 
mons. He  endured  with  patience  the  pedantic  homilies 
of  their  incomparable  Speaker,  Sir  Arnold  Savage.  He 
permitted  them  to  inquire  into  the  mismanagement  of 
his  household  and  with  punctilious  patriotism  to  dismiss 


250  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

the  foreign  attendants  of  his  queen.  He  permitted  them 
to  inspect  and  audit  his  accounts,  to  share  his  counsels 
about  peace  and  war,  to  appoint  special  treasurers  for 
the  application  of  the  war  subsidies,  at  last  even  to  con- 
trol the  composition  of  his  council.  Had  their  measures 
taken  full  practical  effect,  little  would  have  been  left 
him  of  royalty  but  the  crown.  He  probably  managed 
to  soften  the  measure  in  the  execution.  The  lives  of 
parliaments  were  short ;  royalty  lived  on,  and  when  the 
session  was  over  might  regain  its  power.  The  king,  in 
fact,  alone  could  govern,  and  we  can  hardly  look  on  the 
Lancastrian  constitution  as  a  settled  anticipation  of  that 
dependence  of  the  executive  on  the  majority  in  the 
legislature  which  now  prevails  under  the  name  of  cabinet 
government. 

Henry  was  requited  for  his  compliances  by  the  unswerv- 
ing allegiance  of  parliament,  amidst  all  the  conspiracies 
and  rebellions.  On  the  other  hand,  the  'Commons  were 
liberal  of  criticism  and  chary  of  supplies,  underestimating 
the  growing  necessities  of  a  government  always  at  war 
with  Scotland  or  France,  or  both,  contending  with  Welsh 
rebellion,  maintaining  an  expensive  post  at  Calais,  and 
performing  the  guardianship  of  the  seas.  The  Com- 
mons lacked  information ;  they,  like  all  ruling  assem- 
blies, lacked  personal  responsibility,  which  rested  on 
the  king  alone.  The  notion  still  prevailed  that  the 
king  was  to  live  "of  his  own."  His  "own"  comprised 
the  estates  of  the  crown,  much  dilapidated  by  grants ; 
the  revenue  of  the  duchy  of  Cornwall  and  the  earldom 
of  Chester ;  the  old  feudal  perquisites,  reliefs,  aids, 
forfeitures,  escheats,  custody  of  feudal  estates  during 
minority,  hands  of  heirs  and  heiresses  for  sale;  fines 


xii  HENRY   IV  251 

and  fees  of  various  kinds':  the  whole  roughly  reckoned 
at  about  twenty-three  thousand  pounds.  To  this  are 
to  be  added  the  customs  allowed  the  king  as  guardian 
of  the  sea,  and  amounting  to  about  forty-two  thousand 
pounds.  Manifestly  if  the  king  could  live  on  this,  his 
government,  with  all  the  claims  upon  it,  could  not. 
But  for  anything  beyond  it  was  necessary  to  go  to  the 
Commons  for  subsidies  with  the  plea  of  extraordinary 
need,  of  the  validity  of  which  the  Commons  were  ill 
qualified  to  judge.  Henry  had  to  contend  with  the 
belief  that  he  had  inherited  a  great  treasure  from  his 
predecessor.  In  dealing  with  Welsh  rebellion  and  danger 
from  abroad,  the  arm  of  his  government  was  always 
shortened  by  want  of  money.  It  was  apparently  to  ease 
himself  of  the  pressure  of  parliamentary  opposition  that 
the  king  sometimes  called  great  councils  of  peers  and 
notables  by  letters  under  the  privy  seal.  The  great 
council  survived,  though  superseded  in  supremacy  by 
parliament,  and  the  kings,  when  parliament  was  fractious, 
were  inclined  to  turn  to  it,  as,  long  after  this,  did 
Charles  I.  But  the  elective  principle  was  by  this  time 
too  strong  for  circumvention. 

A  more  equivocal  ally  than  the  knights  of  the  shire 
Henry  found  in  the  church,  which  was  ready  to  accept 
his  aid  against  the  heresies  of  Wycliffe  and  the  Lollards, 
still  more  against  the  attacks  on  ecclesiastical  wealth, 
seriously  menaced  not  from  the  quarter  of  the  Lollards 
alone.  Startling  to  the  catholic  ear  and  subversive  of  the 
sacerdotal  system  as  Wycliffe's  doctrines  had  been,  the 
bishops  did  not  at  first  show  much  inclination  to  perse- 
cute. They  were  most  of  them  men  of  the  world,  prob- 
ably little  interested  in  theological  questions  and  little 


252  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

zealous  for  the  faith ;  they  we're  made  timid  by  the  grow- 
ing unpopularity  of  their  order  and  the  multiplying  signs 
of  a  disposition  to  relieve  it  of  its  riches.  They  allowed 
Wycliffe  to  end  his  days  a  rector  and  in  peace.  Nor  did 
the  Lollards  much  court  martyrdom  ;  the  number  of  those 
who  recanted  or  were  won  over  exceeded  the  number  of 
those  who  suffered.  Doctrinal  Lollardism  there  still  was, 
even  in  the  household  of  the  king,  who  had  to  apologize 
for  the  impiety  of  some  of  his  gentlemen  in  turning  their 
backs  on  the  procession  of  the  Host.  But  social  and 
economical  Lollardism,  which  denounced  the  unspiritual 
opulence  of  the  ministers  of  Christ  and  proposed  to 
relieve  the  taxpayer  by  the  confiscation  of  ecclesiastical 
estates,  found  more  numerous  disciples  and  was  more 
formidable  to  the  clergy.  As  the  creed  of  Wycliffe's 
poor  priests  with  their  obscure  conventicles,  Lollardism 
might  be  disregarded  by  the  hierarchy ;  as  the  stalking- 
horse  of  a  party  of  confiscation  it  could  not.  Henry's 
father  had  coquetted  with  it  for  a  political  purpose,  and 
such  was  the  natural  line  of  what  would  now  be  called  a 
great  Whig  house.  But  Henry  needed  the  support  of  the 
hierarchy  against  the  oligarchy,  and  Archbishop  Arundel, 
the  leader  of  the  party  of  intolerance,  chief  minister  dur- 
ing the  greater  part  of  the  reign,  was  allowed  to  have  his 
way  except  when  he  protested  against  the  execution  of 
Archbishop  Scrope.  Heresy,  it  may  be  said,  had  always 
been  treason  against  a  state  identified  with  the  church. 
We  have  seen  that  in  the  reign  of  Henry  II.  some  Ger- 
man heretics,  though  not  put  to  death,  were  scourged, 
branded,  and  turned  out  to  die.  But  a  formal  statute  for 
1401  the  burning  of  heretics  was  now  passed,  at  the  instance  of 
the  clergy  in  convocation,  with  the  concurrence  of  the 


xii  HENRY  IV  253 

Commons,  the  majority  of  whom  were  probably  as  ready 
to  purge  themselves  of  heresy  as  they  were  to  strip  the 
church  of  her  wealth.  The  first  to  suffer  was  Sawtre,  who 
was  thus  the  protomartyr  of  protestantism  in  England;  1401 
the  second  was  Badby,  a  mechanic,  who  maintained  that  1410 
the  Host  was  not  the  body  of  Christ  but  a  lifeless  thing, 
less  worthy  of  reverence  than  anything,  toad  or  spider, 
that  had  life.  Ecclesiastical  hypocrisy  observed  the 
usual  form.  The  church  did  not  burn  the  heretic ;  she 
gave  him  to  the  state  to  be  burned.  Lollardism,  being 
persecuted,  naturally  became  disloyal  and  broke  out  into 
insurrection  at  the  beginning  of  the  next  reign. 

One  of  the  mysteries  of  the  period  is  the  conduct  of  the 
friars,  who  in  spite  of  the  king's  alliance  with  the  church 
and  the  statute  De  Hceretico  Comburendo  were  the  busy 
sowers  of  conspiracy  and  rebellion.  It  may  have  been 
that  they  scented  danger  to  the  possessions  of  their 
order;  it  may  have  been  simply  that  their  wandering 
habits  and  their  access  to  families  made  them  available 
as  instruments  of  agitation.  In  the  natural  course  of 
things  when  ascetic  enthusiasm  is  extinct  and  mere  idle- 
ness succeeds,  the  angelic  brotherhood  of  St.  Francis  of 
Assisi  degenerated  into  strolling  knavery. 

Historians  have  been  puzzled  by  what  appears  to  them 
the  mixture  of  good  and  evil  in  the  character  and  gov- 
ernment of  Henry  IV.  One  eminent  historian  doubted 
whether  he  should  call  Henry  the  best  or  the  worst  of 
kings.  The  answer  to  the  riddle  partly  lies  in  the  lower- 
ing of  the  moral  standard  in  England  and  throughout 
Christendom.  Unscrupulousness  in  winning  power  and 
in  keeping  it,  even  to  the  extent  of  political  murder,  was 
compatible  with  the  general  desire,  as  well  as  with  the 


254  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP,  xn 

ability,  to  use  it  well.  This,  in  fact,  was  Machiavellisra, 
with  which  the  time,  since  the  decay  of  the  catholic 
morality,  was  big.  Of  needless  cruelty  Henry  cannot  be 
accused ;  rather  he  may  be  praised  for  clemency,  con- 
sidering the  perfidy  and  treachery  which  surrounded 
him.  In  his  conflict  with  oligarchical  faction  he  certainly 
represented  order,  national  unity,  and  civilization.  That 
his  life  was  one  of  the  most  arduous  and  anxious  labour 
in  the  public  service,  that  his  health  was  sacrificed  to  war 
and  business,  that  on  the  terrible  day  of  Shrewsbury  and 
on  every  field  of  action  he  was  in  the  forefront  of  danger, 
cannot  be  denied.  His  policy  bequeathed  to  his  son  a 
secure  throne  and  the  power  of  carrying  his  people  with 
him  into  a  war  of  ambition  disastrous  at  once  to  the 
dynasty  and  to  the  nation. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

HENKY   V 
BORN  1388;  SUCCEEDED  1413;  DIED  1422 

HHHE  son  was  a  hero.  By  his  integrity,  his  magnanimity, 
his  piety,  as  well  as  his  prowess  in  war,  Henry  V. 
deserves  that  name.  There  is  a  severe  beauty  in  his 
character  as  well  as  in  his  face.  His  French  enemies, 
while  they  found  him  stern,  found  him  upright,  and 
after  the  murderous  brigandage  in  the  name  of  war  to 
which  they  had  been  accustomed,  they  were  agreeably 
surprised  by  his  comparative  humanity  and  the  disci- 
pline of  his  camp ;  positively  humane  he  cannot  be 
called,  since  he  passed  the  word  at  Agincourt  to  kill 
prisoners,  and  in  his  later  days  hanged  men  to  strike 
terror.  It  is  not  unlikely  that  he  had  higher  aims  than 
those  of  a  mere  conqueror,  arid  that,  had  he  lived  to 
rule  France,  he  would  have  put  an  end  to  her  distrac- 
tions, and,  as  far  as  was  possible  for  a  foreigner,  ruled 
her  well.  To  Normandy,  when  conquered,  he  showed 
a  disposition  to  grant  a  measure  of  English  freedom. 
Henry  V.  is  a  hero,  yet,  in  the  sequel,  the  meanest  king 
that  ever  sat  upon  the  throne  did  not  so  much  mischief 
to  the  country,  or  brought  upon  it  so  much  shame. 

Henry  began  his  reign  auspiciously.  He  frankly  ac- 
cepted the  popular  principles  of  his  house,  at  once 
assenting  to  the  declaration  that  the  explicit  consent 

255 


256  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

of  parliament  was  necessary  to  all  laws,  which  forms  a 
landmark  in  political  history.  Apparently  he  embraced 
with  mind  and  heart  the  vital  principle  of  constitutional 
monarchy,  thorough  identification  of  the  king  with  the 
people.  He  also  entered  at  once  on  a  policy  of  recon- 
ciliation, admitting  to  his  grace  his  father's  enemies  and 
trying  to  wipe  out  the  traces  of  the  feud.  In  this  he 
had  the  advantage  over  his  father  of  an  established  title, 
and  of  never  having  been  known  as  an  equal  by  those 
over  whom  he  reigned.  He  was  rewarded  by  the  loyalty 
of  Hotspur's  son  to  the  house  of  Lancaster.  But  it 
shows  how  rife  was  the  spirit  of  intrigue  and  mutiny 
among  his  nobles,  that  when  he  was  on  the  point  of  lead- 
ing the  national  army  to  France  he  should  have  discovered 
a  conspiracy  in  favour  of  the  Earl  of  March,  the  heir  of 
the  legitimist  title  to  the  throne,  in  which  Scrope,  a  man 
in  whom  he  had  reposed  especial  confidence,  bore  a  part. 
The  dangerous  side  of  his  character  as  a  civil  ruler  was 
his  piety,  which  in  those  days  was  incompatible  with 
tolerance.  He  was  not,  nor  could  he  ever  have  been,  a 
cruel  persecutor,  or  the  patron  of  an  Inquisition.  Ap- 
parently he  was  sincerely  desirous  of  saving  the  bodies 
of  the  heretics  as  well  as  their  souls,  and  he  personally 
did  his  best  to  convert  them.  But  he  was  orthodox  and 
devout,  which  a  catholic  king  could  not  be  without 
treating  heresy  as  a  crime.  He  founded  monasteries  late 
in  the  monastic  day.  He  allied  himself  closely  with  the 
clergy  and  renewed  the  persecuting  laws  against  the 
1414  Lollards.  The  result  was  a  Lollard  insurrection,  headed 
by  Sir  John  Oldcastle,  a  man  of  rank  and  fortune,  who 
had  sincerely  embraced  what  may  with  truth  be  called 
protestantism,  since  it  was,  or  aimed  at  being,  the  pure 


xni  HENRY  V  267 

religion  of  the  Gospel.     The  insurrection  was  weak;  in 
fact,  barely  came  to  a  head.     It  was  quelled  with  ease  and 
with  the  usual  consequences  of  unsuccessful  rebellion  to 
the  side  which  had  rebelled.     Oldcastle  was  put  to  death   1417 
as  a  heretic  and  a  traitor. 

Two  years  before  the  execution  of  Oldcastle,  John 
Huss  had  been  burned  at  Constance,  whither  the  repre-  1415 
sentatives  of  distracted  Christendom  had  been  convened 
to  put  an  end  to  scandalous  schism,  reform  the  church 
in  its  head  and  its  members,  and  redeem  the  chair  of 
St.  Peter  from  the  monstrous  vices  of  the  pope. 

The  defeat  and  depression  of  Lollardism,  however, 
did  not  end  the  danger  to  the  church,  whose  inordinate 
possessions,  apart  from  any  question  of  doctrine,  excited 
the  jealousy  and  cupidity  of  a  party  in  the  country  and 
in  parliament,  while  her  vexatious  jurisdiction,  her  ex- 
action of  fees,  and  the  extortion  into  which  her  peni- 
tential system  had  been  turned,  were  always  making  her 
enemies,  especially  among  the  quick-witted  and  money- 
loving  population  of  the  cities.  The  tradition  is  there- 
fore not  improbable  that  Archbishop  Chichele  and  the 
clergy  encouraged  the  king  in  warlike  enterprise  to 
divert  his  mind  and  that  of  the  nation  from  spoliation 
of  their  order.  The  speech  ascribed  by  Shakespeare  to 
Chichele  is  unauthentic ;  but  Chichele  founded  a  chantry 
under  the  form  of  a  college  at  Oxford  to  pray  for  the 
souls  of  those  who  had  fallen  in  the  French  wars;  and 
the  king  on  his  death-bed  cited  the  sanction  of  his 
spiritual  advisers  as  his  justification  before  God  for  the 
blood  which  he  had  shed.  It  appears  that  the  chiefs  of 
the  clergy  heartily  supported  him  in  the  war.  He  was 
not  set  on  by  the  representatives  of  the  nation,  whose 

VOL.   I  —  17 


258  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM 

response  to  his  appeal  at  first  was  guarded,  though  they 
were  afterwards  carried  away  by  his  victories. 

The  claim  of  Henry  to  the  crown  of  France  was  more 
baseless  even  than  that  of  Edward,  since  it  was  not  by 
a  legitimate  but  by  a  revolutionary  title  that  he  held 
the  crown  of  England.  His  only  real  title  was  the 
invitation  of  a  party  in  France,  then  distracted,  as  Eng- 
land had  been  and  was  again  to  be,  by  the  rivalry  of 
princes  of  the  blood  while  the  king  was  imbecile.  The 
conduct  of  France  had  been  unfriendly;  she  had  fo- 
mented and  aided  Scotch  hostility  and  Welsh  rebellion ; 
but  unfriendly  also  was  the  occupation  of  Calais  by 
England,  to  say  nothing  of  her  barring,  by  the  reten- 
tion of  a  remnant  of  Aquitaine  with  Bordeaux  and  Ba- 
yonne,  the  unification  of  France.  The  union  of  the  two 
crowns  upon  the  same  head  was  impracticable,  and  if  it 
had  been  practicable  would  have  been  fatal.  No  legis- 
lative securities  for  the  independence  of  England  would 
have  availed  to  annul  the  influence  which  would  have 
been  exercised  upon  her  government  by  linking  her 
with  France,  and  by  the  immensely  enhanced  power  of 
the  monarch.  In  Henry's  defence  it  is  said  that  war 
was  then  regarded  as  the  noblest  work  of  kings,  and 
that  he  sincerely  believed  in  the  justice  of  his  claim. 
The  justice  of  his  claim,  if  it  satisfied  the  jurist,  could 
not  satisfy  the  statesman.  If  he  burned  for  martial 
enterprise,  the  chronic  enmity  of  Scotland,  whose  border 
knew  no  peace,  would  presently  have  furnished  him  with 
a  warrant  for  a  war,  the  object  of  which  would  at 
all  events  have  been  more  rational.  In  invading 
France,  he  not  only  left  a  hostile  Scotland  in  his  own 
island,  but  gave  her  France  to  foment  and  support  her 


xni  HENRY   V  259 

quarrel.  Ireland  also,  the  commercial  importance  of 
which,  especially  as  a  source  of  supply  for  the  English 
colonies  and  garrisons  in  Wales,  had  begun  to  be  seen, 
was  a  field  which  on  higher  than  commercial  grounds 
urgently  invited  both  the  arms  and  the  policy  of  a 
soldier  king. 

Henry's  mad  enterprise  would  have  ended  with  the 
taking  of  Harfleur,  after  the  loss  of  a  great  part  of  the  1415 
English  army  in  the  siege,  had  it  not  been  for  another 
exhibition  of  the  insensate  pride  of  the  French  chivalry. 
Agincourt,  like  Crecy,  was  a  soldiers'  battle.  The  mis-  1415 
takes  of  the  general  had  again  brought  the  army  into 
a  desperate  situation,  out  of  which,  helped  by  the  blun- 
der of  the  enemy,  it  fought  its  way.  But  there  was 
nothing  at  Crecy  so  full  of  interest  as  the  morning  of 
Agincourt,  when  the  little  army,  thinned  and  weakened 
by  disease,  dejected  yet  not  despondent,  formed  round 
its  gallant  king  to  encounter  the  overwhelming  host 
which  barred  its  march.  Again  the  free  yeomanry  who 
drew  the  bow,  and  the  comradeship  of  the  king  with  the 
soldier,  which  Shakespeare  has  vividly  painted,  showed 
the  importance  of  the  political  element  in  war  power. 
Again  the  bow  prevailed.  The  line  also  prevailed  over 
the  column.  It  was  a  proof  of  the  continuing  decline 
of  the  mailed  cavalry  and  of  military  aristocracy  that 
at  Agincourt  not  only  the  English  but  the  French  man- 
at-arms  dismounted  and  fought  on  foot.  War  is  still 
growing  professional  and  scientific.  Gunpowder  makes 
its  way.  Battering  artillery  becomes  effective  and  hand 
guns  are  introduced.  All  this  is  against  aristocracy. 
To  Henry,  as  he  not  only  pressed  but  built  ships,  is 
given  the  credit  of  having  founded  the  royal  navy  ;  an 


260  THE  UNITED  KINGDOM  CHAP,  xm 

institution  henceforth  continuous,  though  its  mighty  im- 
portance, military  and  political,  belongs  to  later  times. 

It  was  not  wonderful  that  the  king,  who  had  com- 
manded and  borne  himself  nobly  at  Agincourt,  declaring 
that  England  should  never  pay  a  penny  for  his  ransom, 
should  become  the  object  of  a  disastrous  enthusiasm,  or 

1415  that  when  he  landed  in  England  after  victory  the  barons 
of  the  Cinque  Ports  should  have  carried  him  through 
the  breakers  in  their  arms. 

That  maddest   of   political   murders,  the  assassination 

1419  of  the  Duke  of  Burgundy  at  Montereau,  by  throwing 
the  Burgundians  into  the  hands  of  England,  laid  France 
at  the  king's  feet,  and  enabled  him  in  the  treaty  of 
Troyes,  with  the  hand  of  a  French  princess,  to  extort 
the  reversion  of  the  French  crown.  But  his  campaigns 
had  broken  his  health,  and  he  lived  not  like  Edward 
III.  to  the  reckoning  day. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

THE  WARS   OF   THE  ROSES 
HENRY   VI,   EDWARD   IV,   AND   EDWARD  V 

HENRY  VI.  :  BORN  1421  ;  SUCCEEDED  1422  ;  DEPOSED  1461 

EDWARD  IV.  :  BORN  1442  ;  SUCCEEDED  1401  ;  DIED  1483 

EDWARD  V.:  BORN  1470;  PROCLAIMED  KING  1483;  SUPPLANTED  1483 


rPHE  conquering  hero  gone,  the  conquest  inevitably 
b  slipped  away.  The  Duke  of  Bedford,  a  less  brilliant 
Henry,  with  the  redoubtable  archers,  for  a  time  arrested 
fate  and  gained  fruitless  victories  at  Crevant  and  Ver-  1423 
neuil.  But  the  tide  soon  turned  and  set  steadily  against  1424 
English  domination.  The  English,  masters  of  the  coun- 
try only  when  they  could  hold  it  by  the  sword,  had  to 
disperse  their  force,  always  small,  over  a  number  of  gar- 
risons. The  French  learned  from  dire  experience  instead 
of  fighting  battles  to  make  it  a  war  of  posts.  They 
found  in  Dunois  a  -second  Du  Guesclin,  a  leader  who  was 
a  genuine  soldier,  not  a  Quixote,  and  led  not  for  glory 
but  for  practical  success.  The  spirit  of  the  suffering 
people  of  France  found  its  embodiment  in  Joan  of  Arc, 
whose  execution  left  a  dark  stain  upon  the  English 
escutcheon,  though  her  trial  took  place  at  the  instance  of 
the  University  of  Paris,  and  almost  all  concerned  in  it 
were  Frenchmen  of  the  Burgundian  party,  while  the 
belief  in  sorcery  was  the  superstition  of  the  age,  and 
Joan  owed  to  it  her  victories  as  well  as  her  cruel  death. 
The  internal  feud  which  had  opened  the  gate  to  the 

261 


262  THE   UNITED  KINGDOM  CHAP. 

invader  was  healed  by  the  evils  and  humiliations  of  his 
presence.  The  Duke  of  Burgundy  deserted  in  course  of 
time  the  unnatural  alliance  into  which  only  a  personal 
quarrel  had  led  him.  Province  after  province  was 
reconquered  or  went  back  to  its  natural  allegiance.  At 
last  nothing  was  left  but  the  farcical  title  of  king  of 
France,  retained  for  two  centuries  by  the  kings  of  Eng- 
land, and  Calais,  the  possession  of  which  always  served 
to  keep  up  yearnings  for  conquest,  and  to  misdirect 
the  policy  of  the  island  monarchy.  The  free  navigation 
of  the  Channel,  which  Calais  imperfectly  secured,  would 
have  been  more  perfectly  secured  by  peace.  Gascony, 
the  last  relic  of  the  continental  domains  of  the  house  of 
Anjou,  went  with  the  rest,  against  the  desire  of  its  people, 
who  clung  to  the  English  connection  as  the  safeguard  of 
their  provincial  independence.  Thus  the  end  of  English 
attacks  on  the  French  monarchy  was  its  complete  unifi- 
cation as  well  as  its  lasting  enmity  to  the  assailant. 
The  standing  army  of  France,  the  destined  support  of 
a  military  despotism,  was  another  fruit  of  these  wars. 

But  the  heaviest  price  of  this  magnificent  escapade 
remained  to  be  paid  in  its  effect  on-  national  character 
and  domestic  politics.  Again  great  fortunes  had  been 
swept  by  lucky  adventurers  from  the  gambling-table  of 
the  French  war.  Caister  Castle,  the  mansion  of  Sir 
John  Fastolf,  is  one  of  their  monuments.  Again  the 
spirit  of  restless  adventure,  of  violence,  of  plunder,  had 
been  awakened.  It  was  strong  in  a  nobility  which,  in 
fact,  not  being  lettered  or  provided  with  refined  pleas- 
ures, had  in  peace  little  to  occupy  its  castle  leisure  but 
cabal.  But  society  at  large,  as  the  Paston  letters  show, 
was  pervaded  by  the  same  angry  influence.  It  was  full 


xiv  HEXRY   VI,    EDWARD   IV,    AND   EDWARD   V  263 

of  strife,  chicane,  fraudulent  and  oppressive  litigation, 
violence  sometimes  abusing,  sometimes  breaking  through, 
the  forms  of  law.  Ejectment  at  Caister  is  carried  out 
with  an  armed  force  and  the  disputed  mansion  stands  1469 
a  regular  siege.  Abduction,  among  other  disorders,  is 
rife.  By  the  great  nobles,  with  their  immense  estates 
and  the  hosts  of  retainers  whom  they  protected  in  license, 
feudal  anarchy  was  almost  renewed. 

Of  the  weakness  of  the  hereditary  system  there  could 
be  no  more  striking  picture  than  the  crowning  of  the 
child  Henry  VI.  at  London  and  Paris  to  reign  over  the  1429, 
two  kingdoms,  of  one  of  which  half  remained  to  be  con-  ] 
quered,  with  England  maddened  by  the  war-fever,  a 
debatable  title  to  the  crown,  a  mutinous  nobility,  and  a 
parliament  though  loyal  hard  to  manage.  The  moral  was 
scarcely  more  pointed  when,  after  a  long  minority,  fol- 
lowed by  a  period  of  political  tutelage,  Henry  became  1453 
utterly  imbecile.  It  has  been  conjectured  that  the  earl, 
who  was  his  tutor,  did  his  work  too  well,  and  educated  the 
feeble  boy  out  of  his  wits.  In  those  days  they  had  little 
idea  of  differences  of  capacity;  they  thought  that  the 
rod,  well  applied,  would  bring  all  up  to  the  same  mark. 
But  Henry  inherited  madness  from  his  grandfather, 
Charles  VI.  of  France.  Amidst  the  storm  of  dark  and 
murderous  faction  we  sometimes  catch  glimpses,  like 
glimpses  of  the  moon  amidst  cloud-rack,  of  the  charac- 
ter of  the  king,  gentle  and  pious,  taking  the  side  of  peace 
and  mercy.  Let  alone,  he  would  have  been  a  weak  St. 
Louis.  The  nation  evidently  loved  him,  though  it  could 
not  fear  and  did  not  obey  him.  After  his  murder  he  was 
regarded  as  a  saint.  Nor  is  he  without  a  monument. 
At  Eton  and  at  King's  College  he  still  wears  his  crown. 


264  THE   UNITED  KINGDOM  CHAP. 

While  Bedford  lived,  though  his  energies  were  wasted 
in  the  war,  he  was  able  by  his  influence  to  keep  the  coun- 
cil, into  whose  hands  the  government  fell,  for  the  most 
part  in  the  right  path.  He  alone  could  control  the 
selfish  and  foolish  ambition  of  his  brother  Humphrey, 
Duke  of  Gloucester,  who,  without  capacity  to  rule,  was 
trying  to  make  himself  master  of  the  government. 
Gloucester  had  claimed  the  regency  by  right  of  birth, 
but  the  council  resisted  the  claim,  forming  by  its  deci- 
sion a  precedent  for  after  times;  and  he  was  compelled  to 
content  himself  with  the  title  of  Protector,  and  with  a 
power  limited  by  the  authority  of  the  council.  After 
Bedford's  death  the  ship  began  to  sink.  Beaufort,  sub- 
limely slandered  by  Shakespeare,  seems  to  have  been  a 
statesman,  and  though  a  cardinal,  as  well  as  self-seeking 
and  ambitious,  to  have  been  a  faithful  counsellor  of 
the  crown,  to  the  interest  of  which  he  was  by  kinship 
bound.  His  support  made  the  peace  policy,  to  which  his 
wisdom  inclined  and  which  alone  could  save  the  govern- 
ment, respectable  in  the  eyes  of  the  people.  He,  too, 
passed  off  the  scene.  The  king  was  now  of  age  to  reign, 
but  incapable  of  governing.  The  government  was  in 
the  hands  of  the  queen,  Margaret  of  Anjou,  and  De  la 
Pole,  Duke  of  Suffolk.  Margaret,  the  bride  of  surrender, 
dowered  only  with  the  loss  of  Maine,  came  foredoomed 
at  once  to  partisanship  and  to  popular  hatred.  She  was 
very  young  and  inexperienced.  Whatever  notions  of 
government  she  had  were  not  English.  Her  temper  was 
violent.  She  was  disposed  to  favouritism,  and  her  letters 
indicate  that  she  was  given  to  jobbery  and  to  interference 
with  the  course  of  justice.  De  la  Pole,  her  chief  minis- 
ter, not  being  of  blue  blood,  though  his  family  had  a 


xiv  HENRY   VI,    EDWARD   IV,    AND   EDWARD   V  265 

noble  record  of  public  service,  was  regarded  with  jealousy 
by  the  grandees,  while  his  policy  of  peace  and  his  sur- 
render of  Maine  drew  on  him  the  hatred  of  the  nation, 
whose  pride  was  not,  like  its  force,  exhausted  by  the 
struggle.  He  was  apparently  odious  as  a  favourite.  It 
does  not  seem  that  there  was  much  more  to  be  laid  to 
his  charge.  Gloucester  led  the  party,  large  in  the  nation, 
especially  among  the  seamen,  which  was  still  ignorantly 
and  madly  bent  on  war ;  and  his  popularity  made  him 
formidable  to  the  court.  His  sudden  and  most  oppor- 
tune death  under  arrest  in  the  hands  of  Margaret  and  1447 
Suffolk,  though  it  parried  the  immediate  danger,  did  not 
save  their  government.  Suffolk  fell  before  the  storm  of 
political  hatred.  In  attempting  to  fly  the  kingdom  he 
was  murdered,  and  the  circumstances  of  his  murder,  1450 
which  was  open  and  unavenged,  and  in  which  the  crew  of 
a  royal  ship  took  part,  showed  that  it  was  not  a  mere 
assassination,  but  the  symptom  of  a  general  disaffection. 
The  murder  of  Bishop  Moleyn  by  mutinous  sailors,  who  1450 
accused  him  of  having  sold  Normandy  to  the  French, 
was  another  bloody  sign  of  the  times.  Suffolk's  place  at 
Margaret's  side  was  taken  by  the  Duke  of  Somerset, 
representing  the  aspirations  of  the  Beauforts,  the  bastard 
children  of  John  of  Gaunt  by  Catherine  Swinford,  legiti-  1397 
mized  by  Richard  II.,  but  in  the  act  of  confirmation  by  1407 
Henry  IV.  excluded  from  the  succession  to  the  crown. 
By  this  time  the  government  was  foundering.  The 
finances  were  in  a  desperate  condition.  The  judges  had 
been  for  some  time  without  salaries,  and  must  have  paid 
themselves  by  corruption.  The  court  itself  was  com- 
pelled to  subsist  by  predatory  exaction  under  the  name 
of  purveyance.  The  king's  feeble  intellect  totally  gave 


266  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

way,  and  the  crash,  the  penalty  of  his  father's  insane 
policy  of  conquest,  came. 

1450  The  commons  rose  in  Kent  under  a  local  leader,  Jack 
Cade.  This  rebellion  was  not,  like  the  revolt  of  the 
serfs,  economical  and  social,  but  political.  The  lesser 
gentry  and  yeomen  at  first  joined  it.  Its  manifesto 
demanded  redress  of  the  abuses  of  government,  the  list  of 
which  the  framers,  had  they  spoken  the  exact  truth, 
would  have  summed  up  in  weakness.  The  government 
was  for  a  time  overthrown,  and  once  more  murder, 
rapine,  and  havoc  reigned.  But  the  forces  of  order  in 
the  community  rallied,  the  insurrection  was  crushed,  and 

1450   its  leader  paid  the  forfeit  of  his  head. 

As  the  cloud  of  rebellion  clears  away,  Richard,  Duke  of 
York,  the  legitimist  claimant,  in  virtue  of  his  descent 
by  a  female  line  from  Lionel,  Duke  of  Clarence,  the- 
elder  brother  of  the  Duke  of  Lancaster,  steps  upon  the 
scene  and  challenges  the  ascendancy  of  Somerset.  He 
had  assumed  the  significant  name  of  Plantagenet,  and 
the  rising  of  Jack  Cade  seems  to  have  been  in  his  inter- 
est, if  not  countenanced  by  him.  Presently  he  takes  up 

1455  arms,  and  in  the  battle  of  St.  Albans,  where  Somerset 
falls,  opens  thirty  years  of  intermittent  civil  war.  It  is 
most  likely  that  the  cautious  and  moderate  ambition  of 
York  would  have  been  satisfied  with  a  compromise,  giv- 
ing Henry  the  crown  for  life  and  the  succession  to  York 
and  his  heirs.  In  this  case,  as  in  the  case  of  James  II., 

1453  the  turning-point  was  the  birth  of  an  heir  which  shut  out 
York,  as  it  shut  out  William's  wife  from  the  prospect  of 
succession,  while  the  lateness  of  the  birth  in  both  cases 
alike,  and  in  the  present  case  the  state  of  the  king's 
health,  gave  occasion  for  party  cries  of  fraud.  Mar- 


xiv  HENRY   VI,   EDWARD   IV,   AND   EDWARD   V  267 

garet,  too,  had  now  a  son  for  whose  claim  to  fight,  and 
she  fought  like  a  she-wolf  over  her  cub.     If  after  the 
first  clash  of  arms  there  was  any  hope  of  peace,  it  was 
extinguished  by  her  sweeping  attainder  of  her   enemies   1459 
in  the  parliament   at  Coventry.      Hatred,  deep  enough 
before,  was  deepened  by  the  cruelty  of  her  partisans  after 
the  battle  of  Wakefield.     Fortune  sent  her  no  able  coun-    1460 
seller  or  commander.     The  death  of  York,  which  seemed   1460 
her  gain,  was  her  loss,  since  into  his  place  stepped  his 
son  Edward,  with  a  brilliant  and  precocious  genius  for 
war.     She  fatally  injured  her  cause  by  stretching  out  her 
hand  in  her  desperate  need  to  the  foreign  enemies  of  the 
kingdom,  by  bartering  away  Berwick,  by  bringing  down 
on   southern  England   a  horde  of  northern   marauders. 
After  the  second  battle  of  St.  Albans  she,  or  those  about   1461 
her,  lacked  nerve  to  move  on  London,  and  their  victo- 
rious army  was  led  aimlessly  back  to  the  north  to  be 
crushed  by  the  military  genius  of  Edward  at  Towton.    1461 
That  black  Palm  Sunday  of  fratricidal  slaughter  decided 
the  issue  of  the  civil  war.     The  country  received,  London 
perhaps  welcomed,  the  conqueror  as  king.     London  saw 
the  tiger's  beauty,  felt  his  winning  manner,  and  it  seems 
had  staked  money  on  his  success. 

Young  Edward's  love-match  with  a  Lancastrian  widow   1453 
caused  the  scale  once  more  to  turn,  disconcerted  the  policy     or 
of  the  head  of  his  party,  the  all-powerful  Warwick,  and, 
by  bringing   the   queen's   relatives   to  the   front,  threw 
that  prince  of  schemers  into  the  background.     Warwick 
unmade    the    king   whom    he    had    made,  and    for    one   1470 
more  hour  Henry,  broken  and  imbecile,  became  the  sport 
of   destiny   and   wore   the   mockery   of   a   crown.      But 
Edward  soon  recovered  the  throne.     He  recovered  it,  not 


268  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

through  any  national  movement  in  his  favour,  but  by  his 
1471    own  vigorous  action,  and  by  the  victory  which  at  Barnet 
his  generalship  gained  over  Warwick,  a  politician  pro- 
found in  the  cabinet  but  weak  in  war.     From  Barnet  he 
1471    rushed  upon  Margaret's  last  army  at  Tewkesbury,  smote 
it  to  pieces,  and  laid,  as  he  might  think,  for  ever  by  the 
butchery  of  the  helpless  young  prince  his  namesake,  the 
spectre  of  the  Lancastrian  claim.     Henry  was  murdered 
1-171    in    the    Tower.       To    his    tomb    at    Chertsey    pilgrims 
thronged  and  miracles  were  believed  to  be  wrought  there. 
It  is  not  unlikely  that  his  saintly  character,  contrasted 
with  the  blood-thirsty  ferocity  of  the  princes  of  the  house 
of  York,  kept  its  hold  on  the  hearts  of  the  people  and 
helped  in  the  ultimate  triumph  of  his  house. 

The  period  of  the  Wars  of  the  Roses  is  almost  a  blank 
in  political  history.  No  principle  was  involved  in  the 
struggle.  It  is  true  that  the  title  of  Lancaster  was 
parliamentary,  while  that  of  York  was  legitimist,  and 
that  the  parliamentary  dynasty  would  be  naturally  consti- 
tutional, while  the  legitimist  would  be  naturally  despotic. 
But  there  was  nothing  to  show  that  this  was  the  issue  or 
in  fact  that  either  character  had  been  retained.  The 
charge  of  absolutism  was  brought  by  the  Yorkists  against 
the  queen  and  her  camarilla.  The  line  of  Lancaster  had 
been  legitimized  in  the  eyes  of  the  people  by  two  reigns 
and  Agincourt.  Even  after  York's  victory  at  Northamp- 
ton he  found  the  parliament  rooted  in  its  allegiance  to 
the  heir  of  Henry  V.  and  had  to  content  himself  with  a 
compromise,  leaving  Henry  the  crown  for  life.  Men  took 
the  field  at  the  bidding  of  their  own  lords,  and  the  map  of 
party  coincided  with  that  of  local  influence  and  connec- 
tion. In  the  north  the  house  of  Lancaster  had  always 


xiv  HENRY   VI,   EDWARD   IV,   AND   EDWARD   V  269 

been  strong,  border  warfare  had  retarded  civilization, 
and  the  spirit  of  feudalism  lingered.  London  appears  to 
have  been  Yorkist,  but  it  quietly  accepted  both  kings. 
If  the  Cinque  Ports  were  Yorkist,  it  was  probably  from 
hatred  of  France  and  of  a  peace  policy.  At  Towton 
the  banners  of  the  chief  cities  appeared  on  the  Yorkist 
side.  But  this  was  when  queen  Margaret  had  leagued 
herself  with  the  Scotch  and  brought  down  a  plundering 
northern  army  upon  southern  England.  The  war  can 
hardly  even  be  called  dynastic.  Loyalty  was  not  the 
motive  or  the  watchword.  It  was  a  war  of  aristocratic 
factions  which  presently  became  a  set  of  blood  feuds,  Clif- 
ford slaying  Rutland  because  Rutland's  father  had  slain 
the  father  of  Clifford,  while  the  blood  of  Rutland  is 
avenged  by  murders  on  the  other  side.  In  the  north  it 
was  a  conflict  between  the  great  houses  of  Percy  and 
Neville,  which  had  before  its  outbreak  been  in  arms 
against  each  other  ;  in  the  west  it  was  a  conflict  between 
the  houses  of  Bonville  and  Devon.  When  Devon  who 
has  been  Yorkist  turns  Lancastrian,  Bonville  who  has  been 
Lancastrian  turns  Yorkist.  The  group  of  magnates 
which  had  risen  out  of  the  grave  of  the  feudal  nobility 
killed  by  the  great  Plantagenets,  was  here  divided  against 
itself  in  a  struggle  of  its  houses  for  supreme  power,  and  it 
ended  in  self-destruction.  Livery  and  badges  as  means 
of  factious  organization  play  no  small  part  in  the  frivo- 
lous politics  of  the  time.  The  chief  of  the  group  was 
Warwick,  whose  estates,  spread  over  the  kingdom,  ex- 
ceeded the  domain  of  the  crown ;  whose  badge,  the  bear 
and  ragged  staff,  was  borne  by  a  host  of  retainers ;  who, 
when  he  came  to  London,  kept  such  a  house  that  six  oxen 
were  eaten  at  a  breakfast,  while  all  comers  were  bribed 


270  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

with  largesses  of  food.  Warwick  was  the  head  of  a 
strong  family  connection.  The  last  of  the  barons  he  has 
been  called ;  but  he  has  been  more  truly  described  as 
a  colossal  land -owner  and  an  arch-politician  with  a 
private  army  and  a  private  park  of  artillery.  The  aris- 
tocratic factions,  or  connections  as  they  were  styled,  of 
the  Hanoverian  era  fought  for  power  and  pelf  with  politi- 
cal weapons,  and  the  vanquished  lost  their  places.  The 
aristocratic  factions  of  the  fifteenth  century  fought  for 
power  with  their  swords,  and  the  vanquished  lost  their 
heads,  The  factions  grouped  themselves  under  the  rival 
Houses  and  Roses  ;  but  all  were  playing  their  own  game, 
all  were  fighting  for  spoils,  and,  as  the  fray  went  on,  for 
vengeance,  which  glutted  itself  not  only  in  the  butchery 
of  prisoners,  but  in  insults  to  the  dead.  This  is  a  moral 
interregnum ;  it  is  an  age  of  unscrupulous  ambition,  con- 
spiracy, and  treachery,  the  age  of  the  Borgias  and 
Machiavel.  In  some  of  the  actors  of  the  Wars  of  the 
Roses  is  seen  the  union  of  crime  with  culture  which 
marks  the  Italian  Renaissance.  Tiptoft,  Earl  of  Worces- 
ter, surnamed  the  Butcher,  who  impales  the  corpses  of  his 
victims,  has  studied  at  Italian  universities,  is  a  liter- 
ary man,  and  a  patron  of  letters.  Edward  IV.  is  also  a 
patron  of  letters,  while  he  is  almost  as  cruel  as  an  Italian 
tyrant.  In  lowly  places  Lollardism  still  kept  a  con- 
science and  from  time  to  time  produced  a  martyr. 

The  people  at  large  seem  not  to  have  cared  for 
either  side.  The  seamen,  who  displayed  some  par- 
tisanship, probably  thought  themselves  betrayed  to 
France  by  Henry's  government.  The  retainers  mechani- 
cally followed  their  lords  to  the  field,  but  the  people 
stood  at  gaze  like  a  herd  of  deer  while  the  stags  are 


xiv  HENRY   VI,    EDWARD   IV,    AND   EDWARD   V  271 

fighting  for  the  mastery.  What  the  sensible  part,  and, 
above  all,  the  commercial  part  of  the  nation  wanted,  was 
a  strong  government.  General  feeling  at  the  outset 
probably  was  on  Henry's  side.  But  the  Lancastrians  had 
no  leader ;  the  Yorkists  had  a  leader  of  at  least  tolerable 
capacity  in  York  and  had  a  first-rate  general  in  his  son. 
The  outrages  committed  by  Margaret's  savage  northern 
army  are  likely  to  have  determined  the  cities  which  at 
Towton  fought  on  the  Yorkist  side. 

The  life  of  the  period,  rough  as  it  was,  seems  not  to 
have  been  much  disturbed  by  war.  Even  the  judges  of 
assize  appear  to  have  gone  their  circuits,  though  they 
probably  had  special  need  of  the  sheriff's  guard.  Col- 
leges were  being  founded.  Magdalen  College,  Oxford, 
rose  in  its  beauty  amid  the  storm.  A  town,  such  as  St. 
Albans,  in  or  close  to  which  a  battle  took  place,  felt  the 
fury  of  the  victor,  and  towns  were  sacked  by  Margaret's 
northern  hordes ;  but  there  was  no  general  sacking  or 
havoc.  Each  faction  slew  men  of  rank,  of  whom  many 
were  taken  prisoners  fighting  on  foot  and  impeded  by 
their  heavy  armour.  The  common  people  seem  to  have 
been  spared.  The  armies  were  not  kept  on  foot  and 
quartered  on  the  country,  like  the  brigand  hosts  of  Tilly 
and  Wallenstein ;  they  were  called  out  for  the  battle  and 
sent  home  when  it  was  over.  Nor  do  they  seem  to  have 
been  large.  Medieval  numbers  are  always  untrustworthy, 
and  sometimes  monstrous  exaggerations.  At  Towton, 
the  greatest  as  well  as  the  fiercest  and  bloodiest  of  these 
battles,  one  authority  finds  that  the  probable  position  of  the 
Lancastrians  would  hold  about  five  thousand  men.  There 
were  many  breaks  in  the  thirty  years  during  which  the 
Wars  of  the  Roses  lasted. 


272  THE   UNITED  KINGDOM  CHAP. 

The  natural  result  of  a  military  revolution  was  the 
prostration  of  law  and  liberty  before  the  victor.  A 
despot  Edward  IV.  was  not.  He  put  to  death  with  cer- 
tain judicial  forms  any  one  who  even  by  light  words 
aroused  his  suspicions.  He  put  to  death  on  suspicion  his 

1478  own  brother  Clarence  ;  though  the  story  of  drowning  in 
a  butt  of  malmsey  is  at  least  so  far  true  that  Edward  did 
not  venture  on  a  public  execution.  He  broke  the  law 
against  arbitrary  taxation  by  extorting  what  were  ironi- 

1473  cally  called  benevolences.  But  he  did  not  dare  to  change 
the  law  or  to  raise  a  general  tax  without  consent  of 
parliament.  He  gratified  his  lust  by  seduction,  not  by 
force.  A  despot  he  might  have  made  himself  had  not 
the  energy  which  by  decisive  strokes  of  war  had  won  so 
many  fields  sunk  when  war  was  over  into  the  torpor  of 
the  debauchee.  Royalty  now  dons  full  state.  Ceremonious 
etiquette  is  fully  born.  A  Nuremberger,  in  the  suite  of  a 
Bohemian  nobleman,  was  allowed  the  privilege  of  seeing 
the  queen  dine.  She  sat  on  a  golden  stool  alone  at  her 
table,  her  mother  and  the  king's  sisters  standing  far 
below  her.  When  she  spoke  to  either  of  them  they  knelt 
down  and  remained  kneeling  till  she  drank  water.  All 
her  ladies,  and  even  her  lords  in  waiting,  had  to  kneel 
during  the  whole  of  her  dinner,  which  lasted  three  hours. 
After  dinner  there  was  dancing,  but  the  queen  remained 
seated  with  her  mother  kneeling  before  her.  This  out-does 
the  court  of  Louis  XIV. 

1483  The  boy  Edward  V.  was  proclaimed  only  to  die  and 
make  way  for  the  daring  usurper,  whose  brief  reign  forms 
the  last  and  not  the  least  tragic  scene  of  the  long  and 
bloody  drama  of  the  Wars  of  the  Roses. 


xiv  RICHARD   III  278 

RICHARD   in 
BORN  1450;  SUCCEEDED  1483;  DIED  1485 

,  The  historical  school  which  prefers  the  scientific  to  the 
moral  treatment  of  character  has  a  good  subject  in 
Richard  III.  Rehabilitation  of  him  is  not  only  a  paradox 
but  a  platitude.  Charges  may  have  been  heaped  upon 
his  memory  by  his  victorious  foes.  His  deformity  was 
exaggerated;  so  may  have  been  his  crimes.  Born  in  a 
depraved  era,  he  had  been  bred  amid  treachery  and 
murder.  His  boyish  eyes  had  feasted  on  civil  bloodshed. 
At  Tewkesbury,  where  he  commanded  a  division  at  nine- 
teen, if  he  did  not  stab  Prince  Edward,  he  must  have 
borne  a  part  in  the  butchery  of  a  number  of  prisoners, 
taken,  as  Lancastrians  averred,  after  promise  of  pardon, 
in  a  church.  He  was  in  the  Tower,  and  we  may  be  sure 
in  command,  when  Henry  VI.  was  murdered.  It  is  a 
moot  point  whether  his  brother  Clarence,  standing  in  his 
path,  was  helped  by  his  intrigue  to  a  better  world.  No 
one  doubts  that  he  slaughtered  Hastings,  Rivers,  Grey, 
and  Vaughan.  He  wanted  them  out  of  his  way  and 
removed  them  without  remorse.  We  may  acquit  him 
of  murdering  his  wife;  but  it  seems  he  wished  her  dead, 
and  desired  as  a  stroke  of  policy  to  marry  his  niece  in 
her  room.  Evidently  he  was  a  man  of  intellect.  His 
features,  if  his  portrait  can  be  trusted,  were  refined  and 
pensive.  He  was  at  the  same  time  full  of  energy,  and 
flatter}'-  could  tell  him  that  never  had  nature  enclosed 
so  great  a  spirit  in  so  small  a  frame.  Nor  is  it  at  all 
unlikely  that,  after  winning  his  power  by  crimes,  and 
cementing  it  by  an  unnatural  murder,  he  would  have 
used  it  well.  The  tendency  of  his  legislation  appears 

VOL.  I 18 


274  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

to  have  been  liberal.  He  condemned  benevolences, 
though  he  was  fain  to  resort  to  them.  By  a  statute 
freely  admitting  books  he  marked  the  age  and  did  credit 
to  himself.  The  weakness  of  his  title  would  have  com- 
pelled him  to  make  friends  of  the  people.  He  had 
tried  to  tune  public  opinion  through  the  pulpit,  the 
feeble  precursor  of  the  press.  His  usurpation,  though 
effected  by  villainy  and  masked  by  pretexts  transparently 
false,  including  one  which  traduced  the  character  of  his 
own  mother,  does  not  seem  to  have  greatly  shocked 
opinion.  The  nation,  with  its  moral  sensibilities  blunted 
as  they  must  have  been  by  the  long  carnival  of  crime  and 
blood,  might  well  prefer  the  rule  of  a  very  able  though 
unprincipled  man  to  another  minority  with  an  irrespon- 
sible camarilla.  Richard  appears  to  have  been  well 
received  on  progress  through  the  country,  especially  at 
York  and  in  the  north.  Bishop  Wayneflete,  the  pious 
founder  of  Magdalen  College,  came  to  entertain  him 
there,  and  had  exercises  performed  before  him  in  the 
College  Hall.  Another  bishop,  with  substantial  reasons 
it  is  true,  hails  him  as  the  paragon  of  kings.  Without 
the  murder  of  the  princes  it  would  not  be  easy  to  under- 
stand the  storm  which  overturned  his  throne.  We  might 
suppose  that  it  was  merely  the  last  blast  of  the  elements 
which  had  been  raging  so  long.  An  hereditary  claim 
no  stronger  than  that  of  his  rival  would  hardly  have 
fired  a  heart  or  strung  a  bow.  But  Graf  ton  may  well 
be  right  in  saying  that  the  murder  of  Richard's  nephews, 
generally  known  or  suspected,  turned  national  feeling 
against  the  murderer.  The  commons  were  probably  not 
so  lost  to  humanity  as  the  aristocratic  factions.  To 
witnessing  the  slaughter  of  any  number  of  political 


xn  RICHARD   III  275 

enemies  they  were  accustomed.  This  they  would  have 
taken  as  a  matter  of  course.  But  the  murder  of  two 
royal  boys  by  the  uncle  who  had  them  in  his  trust  was 
an  outrage  on  human  nature  which  appealed  to  every 
heart.  Some  have  thought  that  Richard  was  a  man  more 
of  impulse  than  of  foresight.  His  foresight  certainly 
failed  him  when  he  rushed  into  this  crime.  His  guilt 
can  hardly  be  doubted.  In  whose  keeping  were  the  boys 
when  they  disappeared?  Who  had  an  interest  in  their 
removal  ?  What  became  of  them  ?  Why,  when  the  storm 
of  public  indignation  arose  and  might  have  been  allayed 
by  producing  them,  were  they  not  produced  ?  Whose  were 
the  two  skeletons,  corresponding  to  the  ages  of  the  boys, 
which  in  the  reign  of  Charles  II.  were  found  in  a  place  1674 
indicated  by  the  confession  of  the  reputed  murderers? 
The  story  of  Perkin  Warbeck  admits  the  murder  of  the 
elder  brother,  pretending  only  that  the  younger  escaped. 

In  the  insurrection  of  Buckingham,  which  had  appar-   1483 
ently  no   cause   but  the   magnate's   pique,    and   in   the 
crafty  wavering  of  Stanley  on  the  field  of  Bosworth,  is    1485 
displayed  once   more   the   spirit   of  aristocratic   faction, 
while  the  furies  of  the  dynastic   and  family  war  were 
seen  to  concentrate  themselves  in  the  demoniacal  fierce- 
ness with  which  Richard  was  seeking  his  adversary's  life 
when  he  lost  his  own. 

Through  all  this  parliament  had  lived.  It  had  been 
packed,  of  course,  by  the  victors  of  the  hour,  sometimes 
shamelessly,  and  used  as  the  instrument  of  party  policy, 
of  party  murders  and  confiscations  in  the  guise  of  Acts 
of  Attainder,  of  party  settlements  and  resettlements 
of  the  crown.  Still  it  had  lived  and  held  its  place  in 
the  constitution.  Neither  party  had  dared  to  legislate 


276  THE   UNITED  KINGDOM  CHAP. 

or  attaint  without  it.  It  had  even  shown  a  spark  of 
independence  when  York  after  his  first  successes  laid  his 
hand  upon  the  throne.  Free  election  to  it  had  been  a 
popular  demand  put  forward  in  the  manifesto  of  the 
1430  insurgents  under  Cade.  By  an  Act  of  Henry  VI.  the 
qualification  for  the  electors  of  the  knights  of  the  shire 
had  been  regulated  and  fixed  at  the  forty-shilling  free- 
hold, at  which  it  was  kept  by  English  conservatism 
down  to  the  reform  of  1832.  All  the  powers  which 
parliament  now  possesses,  and  in  some  respects  more 
than  it  legally  and  theoretically  now  possesses,  it  had 
acquired,  chiefly  by  taking  advantage  of  the  king's 
financial  necessities;  legislation,  taxation,  appropriation 
of  supplies,  auditing  of  accounts,  inquiry  into  expendi- 
ture, impeachment  of  ministers,  together  with  the  neces- 
sary privilege  of  freedom  of  members  from  arrest.  It  had 
besides  been  formally  taken  into  counsel  by  the  crown 
on  questions  of  war  and  peace,  which  at  present  are 
beyond  its  formal  competence,  and  it  had  interfered 
directly  with  the  composition  of  the  royal  council,  over 
which  it  has  at  present  only  an  indirect  control.  It  had 
disposed  of  the  regency.  It  had  settled  the  succession 
to  the  crown.  The  Commons  had  established,  as  against 
the  Lords,  their  right  to  the  sole  origination  of  money 
grants,  with  the  power  attendant  on  that  right.  Eng- 
land was  a  commonwealth,  and  a  commonwealth  in  form 
and  principle  it  remained,  though,  through  the  temporary 
failure  of  the  forces  by  which  parliament  had  been 
created  and  sustained,  a  period  of  practical  autocracy 
was  at  hand.  Fortescue,  Chief  Justice  of  the  King's 
Bench  under  Henry  VI.,  and  governor  of  the  Prince  of 
Wales,  could  say,  "A  king  of  England  cannot  at  his 


xiv  RICHARD   III  277 

pleasure  make  any  alterations  in  the  laws  of  the  land, 
for  the  nature  of  his  government  is  not  only  regal  but 
political.  Had  it  been  merely  regal,  he  would  have  a 
power  to  make  what  innovations  and  alterations  he 
pleased  in  the  laws  of  the  kingdom,  impose  tallages  and 
other  hardships  upon  the  people  whether  they  would  or 
no,  without  their  consent,  which  sort  of  government  the 
civil  laws  point  out  when  they  declare  quod  principi 
placuit,  legis  habet  vigorem.  But  it  is  much  otherwise 
with  a  king  whose  government  is  political,  because  he 
can  neither  make  any  alteration  nor  change  in  the  laws 
of  the  realm  without  the  consent  of  the  subjects,  nor 
burden  them  against  their  wills  with  strange  imposi- 
tions ;  so  that  a  people  governed  by  such  laws  as  are 
made  by  their  own  consent  and  approbation  enjoy  their 
properties  securely  and  without  the  hazard  of  being  de- 
prived of  them  either  by  the  king  or  any  other.  The 
same  things  may  be  effected  under  an  absolute  prince, 
provided  he  do  not  degenerate  into  the  tyrant.  Of  such 
a  prince  Aristotle,  in  the  third  of  his  Politics,  says,  'It 
is  better  for  a  city  to  be  governed  by  a  good  man  than 
by  bad  laws.'  But  because  it  does  not  always  happen 
that  the  person  presiding  over  a  people  is  so  qualified, 
St.  Thomas,  in  the  book  which  he  writ  to  the  king  of 
Cyprus,  De  Recjimine  Principum,  wishes  that  a  kingdom 
could  be  so  instituted  as  that  the  king  might  not  be  at 
liberty  to  tyrannize  over  his  people,  which  only  comes  to 
pass  in  the  present  case;  that  is,  when  the  sovereign 
power  is  restrained  by  political  laws.  Rejoice,  therefore, 
my  good  Prince,  that  such  is  the  law  of  the  kingdom  which 
you  are  to  inherit,  because  it  will  afford,  both  to  your- 
self and  subjects,  the  greatest  security  and  satisfaction." 


278  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP,  xiv 

That  the  House  of  Commons,  however,  was  far  from 
democratic,  is  shown  by  the  enactment  of  reiterated 
statutes  of  Labourers,  to  keep  down  wages,  and  Vagrant 
Acts,  to  bind  the  labourer  to  the  manor.  The  forty- 
shilling  freehold  was  a  qualification  which,  allowing  for 
the  difference  in  the  value  of  money,  would  be  high  at 
the  present  day.  Of  the  borough  elections  most  would 
be  in  the  hands  of  municipal  oligarchies.  Besides,  there 
were  the  irregular  influences  of  the  crown  through  its 
sheriffs  and  of  local  magnates.  Annual  parliaments, 
which  had  been  ordained  under  Edward  II.,  and  payment 
of  members,  were  different  things  in  those  days  from 
what  they  would  be  now.  So  was  membership  of  the 
House  of  Commons.  We  hear  of  members  elected  but 
refusing  to  serve,  absconding,  and  pursued  with  hue  and 
cry.  It  was  necessary  to  pay  representatives  for  their 
services  in  those  days,  whereas  in  the  present  day  they 
are  glad  to  pay  dearly  for  being  allowed  to  serve. 
There  were  sometimes  considerable  intervals  between 
sessions,  with  no  political  press  to  fill  the  gap.  Nor 
were  the  members  trained  parliamentary  hands,  though 
they  would  be  trained  in  some  measure  for  public  life  by 
local  legislation  and  the  administration  of  local  justice. 
Government  was  still  in  the  crown,  and  in  the  crown 
there  was  need  that  it  should  be  when  the  representatives 
of  the  nation  were  so  uninformed  and  so  little  capable 
of  taking  the  helm.  Political  landmarks  were  not  fixed, 
nor  were  principles  defined  as  they  are  at  the  present 
day.  Much  was  still  in  a  state  of  flux  and  varied  with 
the  shifting  forces  of  the  hour. 


CHAPTER   XV 

HENRY   VII 
BORN  1456;  SUCCEEDED  1485;  DIED  1509 

E  have  now  fairly  come  to  the  end  of  the  catholic 
middle  age.  Its  starlight  yields  to  the  flush  of  dawn. 
Classical  literature  and  art,  revived  in  Italy,  have  been 
substituting  the  Greek  and  Roman  for  the  ecclesiastical 
ideal.  Asceticism,  treating  the  body  as  the  prison  of  the 
soul,  and  seeking  by  mortification  to  subdue  it,  is  being 
supplanted  by  the  sense  of  beauty,  apt  to  slide  into 
sensuality.  The  architecture  of  the  Gothic  cathedral  is 
giving  place  to  that  of  the  Parthenon  and  the  Pantheon. 
Painting,  even  when  ostensibly  religious,  is  becoming 
really  human.  From  sculptured  forms  of  macerated 
saints  adoration  is  turning  to  the  beauty  of  heathen 
gods.  If  in  England  medieval  art  still  lingers,  it  will 
not  linger  long.  Colleges  are  founded,  but  monasteries 
no  longer.  In  place  of  the  School  philosophy  the  humani- 
ties reign.  Aquinas,  Duns  Scotus,  and  the  Master  of  the 
Sentences  give  up  their  thrones  to  Plato  and  Cicero.  In- 
stead of  the  monkish  Latin  of  the  middle  ages,  classical 
Latin  is  the  language  of  the  learned.  Education  becomes 
classical.  At  the  same  time  the  vernacular  languages  are 
cultivated  and  national  literatures  grow.  Above  all, 
printing  is  born.  Caxton  has  introduced  it  into  England.  1475 
Between  the  morality  of  Catholicism  and  the  protestant 

279 


280  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

morality  which  is  to  succeed  it,  there  is,  especially  in 
courts  and  among  the  governing  classes,  an  interregnum, 
which  gives  birth  to  the  papacy  of  Alexander  VI.,  and 
the  statecraft  of  Machiavelli.  Our  generation  may  look 
upon  such  a  period  with  interest,  since  it  is  itself  threat- 
ened with  an  interregnum  between  Christian  morality 
and  the  morality  of  science. 

Feudalism,  in  the  most  advanced  countries,  has 
breathed  its  last.  In  England  it  has  fallen  upon  its  own 
sword.  True  chivalry,  the  chivalry  of  the  crusades,  has 
long  been  dead.  In  its  later  travesty,  the  chivalry  of  the 
fantastic  orders,  little  life  is  left.  The  castle,  its  walls 
not  being  proof  against  the  cannon,  is  replaced  by  the 
battlemented  and  moated  mansion,  which  again  will  soon 
be  replaced  by  the  mansion  unbattlemented  and  with  the 
pleasure-ground  in  place  of  the  moat.  The  military 
revolution  holds  its  course.  Artillery  sweeps  the  field 
of  battle.  Firearms  prevail  over  the  bows  of  Crecy  and 
Agincourt.  War  has  thoroughly  become  a  trade  and  a 
science,  with  captains  of  mercenaries,  such  as  the  Italian 
condottieri,  for  its  masters. 

Throughout  Europe  there  is  the  stir  of  a  new  life. 
Commerce  is  growing  more  active,  navigation  is  spread- 
ing its  sails,  discovery  is  opening  new  realms.  Portu- 
guese mariners  have  made  the  passage  round  the  Cape  to 
India ;  Columbus  is  about  to  set  sail.  In  Italy  commerce 
and  industry  have  long  gained  the  upper  hand  of  the 
nobility.  In  England  they  are  gaining  a  place  beside  it. 
Under  Henry  VI.  De  la  Pole,  the  origin  of  whose  family 
was  commercial,  stood  at  the  head  of  the  state  and  almost 
within  reach  of  the  crown.  Cannynge,  a  merchant  of 
Bristol,  entertained  Edward  IV,  in  a  palace. 


xv  HENRY   VII  281 

Feudal  aristocracy  having  wrecked  itself  and  the 
church  being  drugged,  there  is  scarcely  any  political  force 
in  the  field  but  monarchy,  which  in  France  and  Spain 
becomes  permanently  and  completely,  in  England  less 
completely  and  for  the  time,  absolute.  This  is  the  age  of 
kingcraft,  of  which  the  three  masters  are  Louis  XI.  of 
France,  Ferdinand  of  Spain,  and  Henry  VII.  of  England. 
Csesar  Borgia,  in  Italy,  was  its  fiendish  incarnation.  He 
was  the  model  of  Machiavelli.  Henry  VII.  was  the 
model  of  Bacon,  in  whom  there  is  a  Machiavellian 
strain. 

Sir  Thomas  More's  narrative  of  the  reigns  of  Edward 
V.  and  Richard  III.  is  a  political  history.  The  day  of  the 
monkish  chronicler  is  past,  that  of  the  historian  is  at  hand. 
In  More's  "Utopia"  comes  political  speculation.  1516 

On  the  field  of  Bosworth,  Henry  Tudor  put  on  the  i486 
circlet  taken  from  the  head  of  the  slain  Richard.  This 
was  his  real  coronation.  His  title  was  victory,  though  in 
deference  to  the  principle  of  inheritance  by  this  time 
deeply  rooted,  he  entwined  with  it  that  of  succession  from 
a  legitimated  bastard  of  Lancaster,  and  that  of  marriage 
with  the  heiress  of  York ;  the  marriage  after  a  delay 
which  betrayed  his  hatred  of  the  house  of  York  and  his 
fear  of  seeming  to  owe  the  crown  to  his  wife.  General 
weariness  of  the  civil  strife  and  general  prostration 
made  his  victory  decisive.  The  axe  of  aristocratic  fac- 
tion had  deprived  the  middle  classes  of  political  leaders ; 
they  turned  from  politics  to  the  acquisition,  in  agriculture 
or  trade,  of  the  wealth  which  was  to  make  them  politi- 
cally powerful  at  a  later  day. 

A  statute  declaring  the  allegiance  of  the  subject  due   1495 
to   the  sovereign  in  possession,  whatever  might  be   his 


282  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

title,  reassured,  so  far  as  an  Act  of  Parliament  could  re- 
assure, all  who  might  fear  that  in  adhering  to  a  Lancas- 
trian king  they  were  laying  up  for  themselves  wrath 
against  the  return  of  the  house  of  York.  The  spectre  of 
indefeasible  right  was  thus  laid,  and  obedience  was  based 
upon  reasonable  grounds. 

Henry  had,  however,  still  to  buffet  the  billows  of  a  sea 
which,  having  been  swept  by  storms  for  thirty  years, 
could  not  at  once  become  calm.  The  Duchess  of  Bur- 
gundy, a  daughter  of  York,  sister  of  Edward  IV.  and 
Richard  III.,  earned  the  title  of  Henry's  Juno  by  the 
pertinacity  of  her  intrigues  against  him.  Twice  she 
raised  up  pretenders  against  the  hated  Lancastrian. 

1487  Lambert  Simnel,  who  personated  the  Earl  of  Warwick, 
Clarence's  son,  brought  on  the  stage  a  new  force  in  the 
shape  of  the  German  hackbuteers,  Almains,  as  they  were 
called,  under  a  soldier  of  fortune,  Martin  Schwarz.  That 
Lambert  Simnel  was  an  impostor  is  undoubted.  Few 
now  believe  the  story  of  Perkin  Warbeck,  who  gave  him- 
self out  as  Richard,  Duke  of  York,  younger  son  of 
Edward  IV.  But  he  played  his  part  with  skill,  and  he  is 
notable  as  a  low-born  adventurer  who,  in  that  age  of 
social  caste,  could  bear  himself 'with  dignity  in  courts  and 
win  the  heart  of  a  high-born  wife.  Ford  has  painted  him 

1487  well.  From  the  field  of  Stoke,  where,  under  the  rebel 
banner  of  Simnel,  Lincoln,  the  heir  designate  of  Richard 
III.  fell,  Lovel,  the  other  Yorkist  leader,  disappeared  and 
was  heard  of  no  more.  But  in  the  eighteenth  century, 

1708  in  a  vault  beneath  Minster  Lovel,  the  mansion  of  the 
family,  was  found  the  body  of  a  man  in  rich  clothing 
seated  in  a  chair  with  a  table  and  mass-book  before 
him,  which  was  yet  entire  when  the  vault  was  opened, 


xv  HENRY   VII  283 

but,  being  exposed  to  the  air,  crumbled  to  dust.  It  was 
conjectured  that  this  was  the  body  of  Lovel,  who  had 
fled  thither,  trusted  himself  to  a  dependent,  and  been  im- 
mured through  neglect  or  accident.  Such  was  the  last 
relic  of  the  Wars  of  the  Roses.  Intrigue  and  conspiracy, 
however,  were  long  in  dying.  Sir  William  Stanley,  who 
had  betrayed  Richard  to  Henry  at  Bosworth,  betrayed 
Henry  in  turn,  and  met  a  traitor's  doom. 

Nor  was   it  with  aristocratic   conspiracy  and   mutiny 
alone,  but  with  general  turbulence,  that  Henry  had  to 
cope.      The  rough   and  warlike  north   rebelled   against   1488 
taxation.     It  was  speedily  put  down.     Not  so  speedy  was 
the  suppression  of  a  rising  among  the  fierce  miners  of 
Cornwall,  who,  being  stung  to  wrath  by  the  taxgatherers,    1497 
and  having  found  a  noble  to  head  them  in  the  person  of 
Lord  Audley,  marched  to  Blackheath,  and  fought,  almost   1497 
under  the  walls  of  the  capital,  a  pitched  battle,  in  which 
the  royal  park  of  artillery  gave  the  victory  to  the  crown. 
The  country,  when  Henry  came  to  the  throne,  was  still 
generally   unsettled.      Vagabondage,    highway   robbery, 
and  abduction  of  women  were  still  rife.     The  guardian  of 
order  and  civilization  had  excuse  for  strong  measures  and 
for  something  like  martial  law. 

To  quench  the  last  fires  of  civil  war,  to  quell  the  re- 
mains of  feudal  anarchy,  to  bring  forward  the  middle 
class  and  attach  it  to  the  throne  by  fostering  industry 
and  trade,  to  organize  the  nation  thoroughly  under  a 
monarchy  practically  absolute  was  the  aim  of  Henry  VII. 
He  was  the  man  for  his  part,  a  politician  of  the  new  era, 
without  a  trace  of  the  knight  or  crusader,  the  very 
opposite  of  the  founder  of  the  Garter.  In  the  sombre 
and  pertinacious  industry  with  which  his  policy  was 


284  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

wrought  out,  he  was  a  counterpart  of  Louis  XI.  His  new 
palace  at  Richmond  was  not  like  Plessis  les  Tours,  where 
Louis  lived  immured  in  an  impregnable  prison,  with 
crossbowmen  on  the  walls  to  shoot  at  any  one  who  ap- 
proached ;  but  the  inhabitant  of  Richmond,  like  the 
inhabitant  of  Plessis  les  Tours,  sat  working  assiduously 
at  the  centre  of  a  wide  web  of  diplomacy  and  secret  ser- 
vice. Both  of  them,  .as  well  as  Ferdinand  of  Aragon, 
brought  to  perfection  the  espionage  of  which  all  three 
had  need.  Henry  was  not,  like  Louis,  treacherous  or 
cruel.  He  was  only  cold-blooded  and  unscrupulous.  He 
was  ready  to  do  what  policy  required ;  to  marry  his  son's 
widow  that  he  might  not  have  to  give  back  her  dower,  to 
marry  a  lunatic  that  he  might  be  master  of  Castile.  If 
he  kidnapped  the  Earl  of  Suffolk  it  was  because  Suffolk 
had  a  Yorkist  claim.  If  he  judicially  murdered  the  Earl 
of  Warwick,  it  was  because  Warwick  also  had  a  Yorkist 
claim,  and  Ferdinand  of  Aragon  objected  to  giving  his 
daughter  to  Henry's  heir  while  there  was  this  cloud  upon 
the  title.  He  treated  Lambert  Simnel  with  politic  mag- 
nanimity, making  him  a  scullion  in  the  royal  kitchen, 
where  the  pretender,  as  is  said,  would  lie  before  the 
fire  like  a  dog  among  his  dirty  fellows.  He  would  have 
spared  Perkin  Warbeck  if  Warbeck  would  have  remained 
quiet  in  prison.  For  a  king  of  those  times  he  was  mer- 
ciful to  the  Cornish  rebels  and  to  defeated  rebels  in 
general. 

1504  To  prevent  feudal  mutiny  from  lifting  its  head  again, 
statutes  were  made  against  liveries,  that  is,  the  practice 
of  enlisting  hosts  of  retainers  with  the  badge  of  their 
chief,  such  as  Warwick's  bear  and  ragged  staff;  and 
against  maintenance,  or  illicit  combination  for  mutual 


xv  HENRY   VII  286 

support  in  lawsuits  and  quarrels,  by  which  a  powerful, 
patron  secured  a  following.  These  statutes  were  strictly 
enforced,  the  more  so  as  fines  brought  money  to  the 
king's  coffers.  According  to  a  story  told  by  Bacon,  the 
king  was  leaving  the  house  of  the  Earl  of  Oxford,  whose 
hospitality  he  had  been  tasting,  when  his  eyes  fell  on 
long  rows  of  men  in  his  host's  livery  drawn  up  to  do  him 
honour  at  his  departure.  "These  handsome  gentlemen 
and  yeomen,  my  lord,  whom  I  see  on  both  sides  of  me  are, 
no  doubt,  your  own  servants  ?  "  His  host  explained  that 
they  were  not,  but  most  of  them  his  retainers  come  to  do 
him  service  on  the  occasion,  and  chiefly  to  see  the  king. 
"  By  my  faith,  my  lord,"  said  the  king,  "  I  thank  you  for 
my  good  cheer,  but  I  may  not  endure  to  see  my  laws 
broken  in  my  sight.  My  attorney  must  speak  with  you." 
The  royal  guest,  according  to  the  story,  kept  his  word 
and  the  host  had  to  pay  a  heavy  fine.  The  pecuniary 
penalties  of  rebellion  were  exacted  with  the  utmost 
rigour.  The  less  blood  the  king  drew,  says  Bacon,  the 
more  he  took  of  treasure.  Money,  which  might  make 
him  independent  of  parliament,  was  his  darling  object,  at 
last  his  mania. 

The  Star  Chamber,  as  it  soon  came  to  be  called,  has  1487 
an  evil  name,  and  presently  became  an  instrument  of 
tyranny.  But  as  instituted  or  reorganized  by  Henry  VII. 
it  may  well  have  been  a  necessary  instrument  of  order. 
It  was  a  court  formed  out  of  the  council ;  ultimately  it 
was  the  council  itself  sitting  in  the  chamber  which  gave 
it  the  name.  It  exercised  a  censorial  guardianship  of  jus- 
tice, the  course  of  which  at  that  time  was  obstructed  and 
overawed  by  local  violence  or  influence  too  strong  for  the 
courts,  juries,  and  magistrates  of  the  district.  Its  effect, 


286  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

-as  Sir  Thomas  Smith,  writing  in  the  next  generation,  said, 
was  "  To  bridle  such  stout  noblemen  or  gentlemen  as 
would  offer  wrong  by  force  to  any  manner  of  men,  and 
would  not  be  content  to  demand  or  defend  the  right  by 
order  of  the  law."  In  the  north  especially,  according  to 
the  same  writer,  "  It  was  marvellous  necessary  to  repress 
the  insolency  of  noblemen  or  gentlemen,  who,  being  far 
from  the  king  and  the  seat  of  justice,  made  almost,  as  it 
were,  an  ordinary  war  among  themselves,  and  made  force 
their  law,  binding  themselves  with  their  tenants  and  ser- 
vants to  do  or  avenge  an  injury  among  themselves  as  they 
listed."  Like  martial  law,  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Star 
Chamber  might  be  warranted  by  the  crisis.  But  it  was 
continued  and  extended  as  an  engine  of  arbitrary  and 
reactionary  government  when  the  crisis  was  long  past. 
Juries  were  untrustworthy,  they  were  packed,  coerced,  or 
bribed  ;  and  in  facilitating  appeals  from  their  verdict  in 
criminal  cases,  or  even  superseding  them  by  the  royal 
judges,  which  was  the  tendency  of  Henry's  policy,  a 
king  might  think  that  he  was  promoting  the  interests  of 
justice.  A  law  on  this  subject,  however,  which  struck  at 
the  life  of  jury  trial,  was  allowed  to  lapse. 

Unmixed  good  was  assuredly  done  by  the  restriction  of 

1489  the  impunity  given  by  that  clerical  exemption  from  the 
criminal  law,  of  which  Becket  was  the  martyr,  to  clerical 
crime,  though  the  abuse  was  pared  only,  not  abolished. 
Not  less  laudable  was  the  restriction  of  the  privilege  of 

1487  asylum,  now  wholly  mischievous,  whatever  it  might  have 
been  in  the  days  of  primeval  violence  and  revenge.  Such 
measures  were  a  proof  at  once  of  a  bracing  of  the  sinew 
of  public  justice  and  of  a  disposition  to  curb  ecclesiastical 
power.  The  king,  however,  was  orthodox  and  generally 


xv  HENRY   VII  287 

devout.  He  bore  himself  like  a  dutiful  son  towards  the 
Father  of  Christendom,  though  the  Father  of  Christen- 
dom at  the  time  was  Alexander  VI.  ;  he  maintained  the 
heresy  laws ;  he  sought  canonization,  though  in  vain,  for 
Henry  VI.  ;  he  contributed,  though  with  reluctance  and 
sparingly,  to  a  crusade.  The  thaumaturgic  power  of  the 
church  and  her  head,  as  keepers  of  the  keys  and  dispen- 
sers of  the  mystical  sacraments,  was  sufficiently  established 
to  survive  their  claim  to  moral  respect  and  sustain  at 
least  formal  and  ceremonial  religion.  Dispensations  and 
indulgences  are  still  marketable.  The  price  of  relics  has 
not  fallen.  Pilgrimages  are  undertaken.  Becket's  shrine 
is  thronged  with  votaries.  With  the  talk  of  voyages  of 
discovery  is  mingled  the  talk  of  crusades.  Fine  parish 
churches  are  still  being  built,  though  they  are  perhaps 
monuments  of  the  growing  wealth  and  the  taste  rather 
than  of  the  faith  and  piety  of  the  towns.  A  church 
was  the  great  civic  as  well  as  religious  edifice  of  those 
days.  For  church  architecture  the  parsimonious  king 
could  open  his  coffers,  as  his  beautiful  chapel  at  West- 
minster bears  witness,  though  here  with  his  religious  feel- 
ing would  be  allied  the  love  of  art,  which,  it  has  been 
remarked,  was  shown  by  him  first  of  all  the  kings  since 
Henry  III.  He  invited  foreign  artists  to  England. 

Bacon  has  said  of  his  model  of  kingcraft  that  Henry's 
laws  "  were  deep  and  not  vulgar ;  not  made  upon  the 
spur  of  a  particular  occasion  for  the  present,  but  out  of 
providence  for  the  future,  to  make  the  estate  of  his  peo- 
ple still  more  and  more  happy,  after  the  manner  of  the 
legislators  in  ancient  and  heroical  times."  Hallam  will 
not  allow  Henry  this  credit  in  the  case  of  the  statute  of  1487 
Fines,  which  is  supposed  to  have  given  the  power  of 


288  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

breaking  the  entails  of  land  guarded  by  the  enactment  De 
Donis  Conditionalibus  of  Edward  I.  The  power  of  break- 
ing the  entails  of  land  had  already  been  given  under 
Edward  IV.,  by  a  judgment  which  enabled  a  tenant  in 
tail,  by  means  of  a  fictitious  process  called  a  common  re- 
covery, to  divest  his  successors  and  become  owner  of  the 
fee  simple.  An  estate  tail  was  not  forfeitable  for  trea- 
son ;  and  the  object  of  Edward's  judges  was  probably  to 
remove  that  bar.  Henry's  Statute  of  Fines  proves  to  be 
only  a  transcript  of  a  statute  of  Richard  III.  Hallam 
holds  that  the  real  object  was  to  quiet  titles  rendered 
doubtful  by  troublous  times.  Yet  any  measure  which 
helped  to  break  up  the  entailed  estates  of  the  great 
nobles,  whatever  its  immediate  object,  would  fall  in  with 
the  policy  of  Henry  VII.,  which  was  depression  of  the 
old  nobility.  It  would  also  increase  the  number  of  small 
landowners  and  promote  the  growth  of  a  yeomanry. 

Henry  could  be  a  soldier.  He  commanded  at  Bosworth 
and  at  Stoke.  But  his  policy  was  diplomatic  and  pacific. 
The  foreign  question  of  the  day  was  that  regarding 
the  duchy  of  Brittany,  threatened  with  annexation  and 

1491  eventually  annexed   by  Charles  VIII.  of   France.     The 
spirit  of   the    English  people  was  stirred.     They  would 
fain  have    saved    an    old    ally,   kept   their   foothold    in 
France,  where  they  still  dreamed  of  renewing  the  march 
of  conquest,  and  prevented  the  consolidation  of  that  king- 
dom.    Henry  used   the   outburst  of   national  feeling  to 
raise  money  for  war ;    but  while  he  retained  the  empty 
title  of   king  of  France,  he  had  no  mind  to  repeat  the 
adventures   of   Edward  III.    and   Henry   V.      His  own 
diplomacy  was  constantly  directed  to  the  preservation  of 

1492  peace.     He  made  a  show  of  war,  but  allowed  himself  to 


XV  HENRY   VII  289 

be  bought  off  by  France.  Thus,  getting  subsidies  from 
his  subjects  for  war  and  indemnity  from  France  for  his 
neutrality,  he  turned  the  situation  both  ways  into  cash. 
The  policy  was  not  heroic,  but  it  was  better  than  a  re- 
newal of  the  feud  with  France  and  another  diversion  of 
the  national  force  to  the  wild  pursuit  of  barren  and  short- 
lived glories  on  an  alien  field.  To  prevent  the  consoli- 
dation of  France  was  hopeless.  The  counterpoise  and 
antidote  was  the  consolidation  of  the  island  realm. 
With  Scotland,  in  spite  of  the  reception  of  Perkin  War- 
beck  by  the  Scottish  king  and  Scottish  raids  on  England, 
Henry  strove  to  make  a  lasting  peace.  The  way  was 
opened  by  the  sword ;  but  diplomacy  at  last  prevailed  and 
the  peace  was  sealed  by  the  marriage  of  Henry's  daughter  1502 
Margaret  with  the  king  of  Scots,  which  paved  the  way 
for  the  union  of  the  crowns,  and  at  last  for  the  union  of 
the  nations. 

Diplomatic  marriage  was  an  art  of  statecraft  not  over- 
looked by  Henry,  and  in  the  case  of  the  Scotch  marriage 
practised  by  him  with  good  effect,  though  usually  it  is 
weak,  since  when  affection  is  sacrificed  to  policy,  policy 
will  hardly  be  controlled  by  affection.     Besides  marrying 
his  daughter  to  the  king  of  Scotland,  Henry  married  his 
son  Arthur  at  fifteen  to  Catherine,  a  princess  of  Aragon,    1501 
and  when  Arthur  died  he  contracted  her  to  his  next  son,    1501 
Henry,  then  a  boy  of  eleven  ;  rather  than  pay  back  her 
dowry,  it  appears,  he  would  have  married  her  himself. 

The  Tudor  monarchy  rested  on  the  middle  classes, 
which,  in  spite  of  the  Wars  of  the  Roses,  had  been  all  the 
time  gaining  ground,  and,  being  commercial  and  indus- 
trial, welcomed  after  the  civil  war  a  strong  government, 
thinking  less,  for  the  time,  of  political  liberty  than  of 

VOL.   I 19 


290  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

liberty  to  ply  the  loom,  speed  the  plough,  grow  the  wool, 
and  spread  the  sail.  A  nation  enriching  itself  in  peace 
and  submissive  to  the  fatherly  rule  of  a  wise  king  was 
the  ideal  of  the  first  Tudor.  Rulers  who  pass  for  heroes 
have  had  a  worse. 

The  cities  and  towns  had  by  this  time  fully  bought  or 
found  their  way  out  of  feudal  thraldom  ;  they  had  won 
the  privilege  of  self-assessment  to  taxation,  freedom  from 
feudal  burdens,  freedom  from  the  tyranny  of  sheriffs, 
the  right  of  electing  their  own  magistrates,  govern- 
ment by  their  own  laws,  judiciaries  of  their  own,  and  the 
status  of  little  commonwealths  each  within  its  own  walls. 
Each  wrought  out  for  itself  its  own  political  salvation, 
and  was  invested  with  political  franchises,  not,  as  in  these 
days,  by  a  municipal  reform  Act  but  by  a  separate  charter 
of  its  own.  Enfranchisement,  it  has  been  observed, 
was  won  most  easily  from  the  crown,  in  whose  do- 
main the  largest  number  and  the  most  important  of  the 
cities  were,  and  which  welcomed  them  as  allies  in  its 
struggle  with  the  feudal  nobility ;  with  greater  difficulty 
from  the  local  lords,  in  whose  eyes  it  was  rather  a  ques- 
tion of  power  and  money  than  of  policy  ;  with  the  great- 
est difficulty  from  the  ecclesiastical  lords,  who  deemed 
their  properties  and  powers  a  sacred  trust,  and  when 
asked  to  part  with  them  answered,  like  the  pope  at  the 
present  day  when  asked  to  give  up  his  temporal  domin- 
ions, with  a  pious  non  possumus.  The  vexatious  and  sor- 
did litigation  in  which  bishops  and  abbots  were  engaged 
with  citizens  naturally  of  inquiring  spirit  contributed,  in 
fact,  not  a  little  to  the  doom  now  hanging  over  the 
church.  Each  town  formed  its  own  municipal  constitution 
through  a  series  of  experiments,  with  struggles  between 


xv  HENRY    VII  291 

trade  guilds  and  outsiders,  between  monopolists  and  in- 
terlopers, between  masters  and  workmen,  between  civic 
oligarchies  and  democracies,  resembling  on  a  small  scale 
those  which  had  made  up  the  troublous  and  changeful 
history  of  Florence.  It  was  not  in  those  days  as  it  is  in 
these,  when  the  leading  traders  live  in  villas  out  of  the 
city,  or  take  no  part  in  its  government,  which  in 
America  is  left  to  ward  politicians.  The  Poles,  Can- 
nynges,  and  Whittingtons  of  the  Plantagenet  or  Tudor  era 
lived  in  the  city,  sought  its  offices,  guided  its  counsels, 
led  in  its  elections.  A  city  now  has  little  of  unity  ;  it  is 
a  densely  peopled  district  requiring  a  scientific  adminis- 
tration. In  those  days  it  was  a  commonwealth  with  a 
life  and  a  patriotism  of  its  own.  Every  citizen  was 
bound  to  the  common  service,  in  arms  when  the  tocsin 
called,  in  the  duties  of  police,  in  public  works,  and  in  the 
performance  of  official  functions.  Eustace  De  St.  Pierre, 
the  heroic  burgher  of  Calais,  was  more  a  patriot  of  his 
city  than  of  France,  and  when  Calais  had  become  English 
was  content  to  live  under  the  conqueror.  In  England, 
however,  parliament  kept  the  nation  above  the  city  in  the 
heart  of  the  citizen.  It  is  noted  as  a  proof  of  the  com- 
parative facility  with  which  in  this  free  country  the  cities 
won  their  franchises,  that  they  never  found  it  expedient, 
like  the  cities  in  other  countries,  to  form  a  confederation. 
The  only  union  was  that  of  the  Cinque  Ports,  which 
formed  a  little  maritime  commonwealth  specially  charged 
with  naval  defence,  something  like  the  counties  palatine, 
charged  with  defence  against  the  Scotch  and  Welsh.  The 
town  population  had  been  swelled  by  the  inflow  of  serfs, 
on  whom,  by  established  custom,  a  year's  residence  within 
the  town's  franchise  conferred  freedom.  During  the  Wars 


292  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

of  the  Roses  the  cities  had  perhaps  received  more  drift  of 
this  kind  than  they  had  desired.  These  additions  helped 
to  form  the  commonalty  with  which  a  burgher  aristocracy 
contended  for  power.  In  most  of  the  towns  the  aristo- 
cracy had  probably  by  this  time  gained  the  upper  hand. 
Apart  from  the  mere  influence  of  wealth,  commerce  was 
the  bread  of  these  communities,  and  their  affairs  might 
be  best  administered  by  the  commercial  chiefs,  provided 
those  chiefs  were  honest  men  and  could  avoid  the  ten- 
dency of  oligarchies  to  corruption.  There  would  thus  be 
a  loss  of  public  spirit  and  of  local  patriotism  among  the 
citizens  generally,  and  this  would  affect,  through  the 
municipality,  the  political  character  of  the  nation.  On 
the  other  hand,  there  would  be  no  municipal  demagogism 
to  disturb  the  interests  of  industry  and  trade. 

English  manufactures  and  commerce  were  making  way 
and  producing  their  effect  on  national  character.  England 
was  exporting  cloth  to  the  continental  markets,  especially 
to  those  of  northern  Europe,  chief  among  which  was 
the  great  fair  of  Novgorod.  There  were  works  of 
iron,  lead,  tin,  copper.  There  were  budding  manu- 
factures of  the  finer  kind,  glass,  carpets,  lace.  The 
merchant  navy  was  growing,  and,  instead  of  being 
beholden  to  the  Hanse,  English  goods  were  carried  in 
English  bottoms.  The  sea  in  those  d&ys  was  still  an 
element  outside  law.  Piracy  was  common  and  hajf 
licensed.  Mariners  of  different  nations  warred  with 
each  other  while  their  governments  were  at  peace.  To 
trade  in  safety  it  was  necessary  to  organize  an  associa- 
tion strong  enough  to  form  a  sea  power.  Such  an  asso- 
ciation were  the  Merchant  Adventurers  of  England,  who, 
not  without  displays  of  combative  and  irregular  energy, 


zv  HENRY   VII  293 

supplanted  the  old  monopoly  of  the  Staple  and  broke  the 
supremacy  of  the  Hanse,  which  with  its  fortified  quarter 
in  London  had  long  dominated  English  trade.  The 
foreign  trader,  through  the  middle  ages,  was  treated 
almost  as  an  enemy,  a  deduction  from  the  unity  of  papal 
Christendom. 

The  king  repaid  the  support  which  he  received  by 
earnest  attention  to  the  interest  of  trade.  He  made 
English  policy  the  policy  of  a  commercial  and  indus- 
trial realm.  His  only  wars  were  tariff  wars,  waged  in 
the  spirit  of  medieval  protectionism,  but  with  the  object 
of  pushing  English  trade,  the  cloth  trade  above  all. 
Instead  of  conquests  he  made  commercial  treaties,  of 
which  this  reign  is  a  great  epoch.  Most  renowned  was 
the  commercial  union  with  Flanders,  the  mart  of  English  1496 
wool  and  unfinished  cloth,  called  by  grateful  traders  the 
Intercursus  Magnus.  In  this  case  diplomacy  concurred 
with  commercial  policy,  Flanders  being  the  breeding- 
ground  of  Yorkist  plots.  But  the  same  policy  was 
pursued  towards  the  Scandinavian  powers,  and  the 
Spanish  alliance  brought  freedom  of  trade  with  Spain. 
Henry  also  framed  for  the  encouragement  of  the  mer- 
chant navy  the  Navigation  Act  providing  that  English  H85, 
goods  should  be  carried  in  English  ships.  Attention 
seems  to  have  been  turned  to  the  opening  of  much  needed 
internal  communication  by  the  improvement  of  roads. 
Henry  at  least  left  a  legacy  for  the  improvement  of  cer- 
tain roads  and  bridges. 

The  king's  policy  was  protectionist  and  vitiated  by  the 
fallacies  of  that  system,  though  he  imported  weavers  to 
teach  the  backward  West  their  trade.  It  could  not  be 
otherwise  in  those  days.  Yet  with  the  growth  of  com- 


294  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

merce,  manufactures,  and  the  desire  of  gain,  competition 
was  gaining  ground,  and  was  beginning  to  loosen  the 
monopolist  yoke  of  trade  guilds.  The  decay  of  towns,  of 
which  the  preambles  of  statutes  in  the  next  reign  com- 
plain, has  been  ascribed  to  the  flight  of  industry  from 
seats  where  it  was  not  free. 

In  the  voyages  of  discovery,  which  were  a  most  memo- 
rable feature  of   the  age,  the   king  took   a  frugal   and 
cautious   part.     He  lent  his   countenance  and  a  sparing 
1496,  measure  of  aid  to  the  Cabots,  who  sailed  on  a  voyage  of 

1497 

discovery  from  Bristol,  the  commercial  capital  of  the 
west.  The  application  of  John  Cabot  for  Letters  Patent 
in  favour  of  himself  and  his  three  sons,  Louis,  Sebastian, 
and  Sanctus,  is  the  earliest  document  in  the  archives  of 
the  colonial  empire  of  Great  Britain.  The  sunnier 
regions  had  been  pre-empted,  but  the  Cabots  discovered 
probably  the  North  American  continent,  certainly  New- 
foundland, which,  wintry  as  it  was,  presented  in  its  cod 
fisheries  a  gold  mine  richer  than  those  of  Eldorado.  It 
is  believed  that  the  fisheries  were  frequented  from  the 
time  of  the  discovery  by  the  mariners  of  Devonshire,  a 
venturous  and  half-piratical  race,  and  that  the  trade  built 
up  the  prosperity  of  western  England,  while  it  must  have 
developed,  by  bracing  effort,  the  masculine  character  of 
the  nation.  Bristol,  from  which  the  Cabots  sailed,  was 
the  heart  of  maritime  enterprise  and  discovery.  The 
chief  seat  of  trade  was  the  east,  with  its  estuary  harbours 
facing  the  continent.  The  seat  of  the  iron  trade  was  the 
weald  of  Sussex,  where  there  was  wood  in  plenty  to  smelt 
iron,  which  was  not  yet  smelted  with  coal. 

In  the  rural  districts,  as  well  as  in  the  trading  towns,  a 
middle  class  was  gaining  ground.     Since  the  change  in 


XT  HENRY   VII  295 

the  character  of  the  manorial  system  from  the  feudal  to 
the  proprietary,  a  yeomanry  had  grown  up  mainly  of 
tenant  farmers,  but  in  part  of  freeholders,  like  what  has 
been  called  the  territorial  democracy  of  the  United  States. 
Villain  tenure,  though  still  "  base "  in  the  language  of 
law  books  and  politically  unenfranchised,  had  ceased  to 
be  precarious.  It  had  become  a  recognized  tenure  by 
entry  of  the  tenant's  name  in  the  rolls  of  the  manorial 
court,  under  the  title  of  copyhold.  In  the  next  reign 
Latimer  in  an  often-quoted  passage  says  of  his  father, 
"  My  father  was  a  yeoman,  and  had  no  lands  of  his  own, 
only  he  had  a  farm  of  three  or  four  pound  by  year  at  the 
uttermost,  and  hereupon  he  tilled  so  much  as  kept  half- 
a-dozen  men.  He  had  walk  for  a  hundred  sheep,  and  my 
mother  milked  thirty  kine.  He  was  able  and  did  find 
the  king  a  harness  with  himself  and  his  horse.  ...  I 
can  remember  that  I  buckled  his  harness  when  he  went 
unto  Blackheath  field.  He  kept  me  to  school,  or  else  I 
had  not  been  able  to  have  preached  before  the  king's 
majesty  now.  He  married  my  sisters  with  five  pounds, 
or  twenty  nobles  apiece ;  so  that  he  brought  them  up  in 
godliness  and  fear  of  God.  He  kept  hospitality  for  his 
poor  neighbours  and  some  alms  he  gave  to  the  poor ;  and 
all  this  he  did  of  the  said  farm."  To  the  king's  policy  of 
material  progress  old  Latimer's  homestead  was  indebted 
for  its  freedom  from  feudal  violence  and  from  feudal  calls 
to  the  battlefield,  with  leave  to  sow  and  reap  in  peace, 
while  the  benefit  of  the  Intercursus  Magnus  was  felt  by 
the  walk  for  a  hundred  sheep. 

Though  Edward  IV.  had  been  not  less  powerful  than 
the  Tudor,  his  power  ended  with  his  life,  and  the  usurper 
who  succeeded  him  had  been  fain  to  court  the  people. 


296  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

The  monarchy  was  placed  by  Henry  VII.  anct  by  the 
powerful  minister  who  ruled  during  the  first  part  of  the 
next  reign  on  a  firm  and  enduring  basis.  Absolute  it 
never  was  in  form  nor  entirely  in  fact.  Five  checks  have 
been  reckoned ;  the  control  of  parliament  over  taxa- 
tion, its  legislative  authority,  the  security  given  to  per- 
sonal liberty  by  Habeas  Corpus,  the  liability  of  royal 
officers  to  suit  or  impeachment,  and  jury  trial.  With- 
out parliament  no  regular  tax  was  ever  levied,  and 
the  benevolences  or  forced  loans  to  which  kings  had 
recourse  were  evasions,  not  denials  of  the  principle. 
The  fifth  check,  jury  trial,  was  reduced  to  a  form  in 
cases  where  the  crown  had  an  interest,  especially  in  cases 
of  treason,  by  the  practice  of  brow-beating  and  fining 
juries.  Habeas  Corpus  was  set  at  naught  by  arbitrary 
imprisonment.  Prosecution  or  impeachment  of  royal 
officers  was  hopeless  unless  the  king  gave  the  word.  The 
use  of  torture  to  extort  confession  had  apparently  been 
introduced  under  the  camarilla,  in  the  reign  of  Henry  VI., 
though  the  first  recorded  case  is  under  Edward  IV.  It 
became  customary,  though  it  was  never  legalized,  in  con- 
nection with  state  trials  before  the  privy  council  or  the 
Star  Chamber  under  the  Tudors.  An  independent  judi- 
ciary, the  grand  security  for  public  and  private  right, 
there  could  not  be  when  the  judges  were  appointed  by 
the  crown,  were  paid  by  it,  and  held  their  offices  during 
its  pleasure.  Yet  professional  duty  or  spirit  triumphed 
in  some  degree  over  the  servility  of  the  legal  placeman, 
and  the  common  law,  that  is,  the  custom  of  the  realm 
preserved  and  interpreted  by  the  judges,  may  be  reck- 
oned among  the  checks  upon  arbitrary  rule.  Another 
check  was  the  absence  of  a  standing  army,  or  any  regular 


xv  HENRY    VII  297 

force  except  the  yeomen  of  the  guard  and  the  garrisons 
of  Calais  and  the  royal  castles.  The  fact  is  remark- 
able and  shows,  no  doubt,  that  in  the  main  the  Tudor 
monarchy  met  the  temporary  need  and  commanded  the 
allegiance  of  the  nation.  This,  indeed,  is  the  birthday 
of  loyalty  in  the  sense  of  personal  devotion  to  the  crown. 
But  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  crown  had  the  sinews 
of  war  in  its  hands,  and  could  quickly  raise  forces  ;  that 
it  had  commanders  ready,  and  the  only  train  of  artillery 
at  its  service  ;  while  in  the  country  generally,  except 
in  the  north,  military  feudalism  was  dead,  its  troops  of 
retainers  had  been  disbanded,  and  the  lord  had  subsided 
into  the  land-owner  with  the  phraseology  of  lordship  in 
his  title-deeds.  But  the  greatest  check  of  all  on  despot- 
ism was  the  spirit  of  the  nation,  still  unextinguished,  and 
sustained  by  food  and  other  material  conditions  which 
English  writers  proudly  contrast  with  the  scanty  fare 
and  general  wretchedness  of  the  peasantry  in  France. 
Of  private  wrong,  even  of  judicial  murder,  which  did 
not  touch  the  masses,  the  nation  was  too  patient ;  it  was 
not  patient  of  arbitrary  taxation,  perhaps  not  of  extreme 
outrage  on  nature,  such  as  Richard's  murder  of  his 
nephews.  Nor  was  popular  opinion  mute.  Tudor  kings 
stooped  to  tune  it  through  the  pulpit.  Printing  was 
now  becoming  common,  and  thought  might  defy  arrest. 

The  judges  did  more  than  preserve  and  supplement 
the  law.  Under  the  form  of  judgment  they  sometimes 
legislated,  and  in  a  popular  and  beneficent  sense.  By 
turning  villain-tenure  into  copyright  or  tenure  by  court- 
roll,  they  made  it  equally  secure  and  heritable  with  free- 
hold. By  affirming  the  validity  of  fines  and  recoveries 
they  unlocked  land  and  facilitated  its  circulation. 


298  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

Under  Edward  I.,  under  Henry  IV.,  and  apparently 
under  Henry  VI.,  the  House  of  Commons  had  been  elec- 
tive. Under  the  early  Tudors  it  was  elective  in  form,  but 
it  was  packed  with  dependents  and  nominees  of  the  court. 
After  the  fashion  of  a  conge  cCelire,  the  names  of  men 
whose  election  the  court  desired  were  sent  down  to  the 
constituencies.  In  the  next  reign  we  have  an  all-pow- 
erful minister  commanding  that  a  free  election  of  the 
members  for  a  borough  should  be  cancelled  and  his  own 
nominees  elected  in  their  place,  which  accordingly  is 
done.  The  lay  peerage  had  been  decimated  and  cowed, 
and  it  was  outnumbered  in  the  House  of  Lords  by  the 
prelates  and  abbots,  of  whom  the  prelates  at  least  were 
nominees  of  the  crown.  When  the  judgments  of  par- 
liament or  the  preambles  of  its  statutes  are  cited  as 
evidence,  the  composition  of  the  House  is  to  be  borne 
in  mind.  There  were  no  fixed  times  of  election  or  dis- 
solution. The  crown  could  keep  a  servile  parliament  in 
being  as  long  as  it  pleased.  Yet  in  tampering  with  the 
independence  of  parliament  the  crown  acknowledged  its 
authority,  and  the  House  of  Commons,  if  not  really 
elective,  was  in  a  measure  representative  ;  at  least  on 
the  question  of  taxation,  where  it  had  popular  feeling 
strongly  behind  it.  The  knights  of  the  shire,  though 
returned  under  the  influence  of  local  grandees  who  were 
generally  in  alliance  with  the  court,  would  probably  be 
less  subservient  than  were  the  burgesses,  especially  when 
the  city  was  in  the  hands  of  an  oligarchy,  with  which 
the  government  would  find  it  easy  to  deal.  In  a  certain 
sense  the  weakness  of  parliament  may  be  said  to  have 
been  its  salvation.  Had  it  been  strong  enough  to  wrestle 
with  the  Tudors  they,  with  the  influences  and  needs  of 


xv  HENRY   VII  299 

the  time  in  their  favour,  would  probably  have  destroyed 
it ;  as  it  was  subservient,  they  were  content  to  let  it  live, 
to  pay  it  a  nominal  deference,  sometimes  to  let  it  relieve 
them  of  responsibility,  and  to  wield  supreme  power  under 
its  forms. 

Little  independent  as  parliament  was,  however,  Henry 
VII.  seldom  met  it.  He  called  but  seven  parliaments 
in  his  reign  of  nearly  twenty-four  years.  There  was  one 
period  of  seven,  and  another  of  five,  years  without  a  par- 
liament. By  amassing  treasure  and  avoiding  the  waste 
of  war  Henry  had  enabled  himself  to  dispense  with  par- 
liamentary supplies,  to  preserve  at  once  his  own  popu- 
larity and  the  independence  of  his  government.  His 
trade  was  royalty  ;  he  was  not  wrong  in  thinking  that 
strong  monarchy  was  better  than  feudal  anarchy ;  he 
would  not  have  been  far  wrong  in  thinking  strong  mon- 
archy better  than  government  by  an  assembly,  as  political 
assemblies  were  in  those  days,  ill-informed  and  untrained 
to  business  of  state.  A  greater  breadth  of  political  vision 
was  not  in  his  nature  and  could  hardly  be  expected  of 
him  in  the  circumstances  of  that  age. 

It  is  the  well-known  policy  of  absolutist  kings  to 
choose  as  their  ministers  not  nobles  but  men  of  lower 
rank,  thoroughly  dependent  on  their  master,  bound  up 
with  his  interest,  ready  to  do  his  work,  clean  or  unclean, 
and  to  shoulder  the  odium  of  his  unpopular  measures. 
Henry  VII.  chose  ecclesiastics,  whose  service,  besides 
being  devoted  and  intelligent,  was  cheap,  since  it  could 
be  paid  with  bishoprics.  Archbishop  Morton  and  Bishop 
Fox  were  men  after  his  own  heart.  Fox  was  his  diplo- 
matist and  negotiated  the  Scottish  marriage.  Morton 
had  been  trained  in  the  perilous  days  of  the  Roses,  and 


300  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP,   xv 

had   played   an   active  part   in   the   conspiracies  against 
Richard  which  paved  Henry's  way  to  the  throne. 

In  his  latter  days  the  king  fell  into  much  worse  hands 
than  those  of  Morton  and  Fox.  The  craving  for  money 
as  the  sinews  of  power,  and  the  means  of  making  him 
independent  of  parliament,  mastered  his  soul.  He  em- 

1507  ployed  two  agents  of  the  sharp  attorney  type,  Empson, 
a  man  of  low  birth,  and  Dudley,  to  extort  money  by 
the  vilest  practices  of  chicane,  such  as  oppressive  fines 
for  fictitious  offences,  or  tricky  forfeitures  and  escheats. 
The  treasure  thus  amassed  enabled  him  to  dispense  with 
parliament  during  the  last  five  years  of  his  reign.  But 
he  accumulated  odium  in  equal  measure,  and  it  was  under 
the  cloud  of  national  hatred  that,  after  a  life  of  indefati- 
gable industry  in  the  public  service,  with  careworn  brow 
and  melancholy  step,  he  descended  to  the  tomb.  His 
work  had  not  been  the  very  highest,  nor  destined  to  last 
forever ;  but  it  was  done.  The  immense  pomp  of  his 

1509  funeral  betokened  the  height  of  power  and  majesty  to 
which  his  policy  had  raised  the  crown. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

HENRY  VIII 
BORN  1491;  SUCCEEDED  1509;  DIBD  1547 

TN  an  age  of  art  the  artists  chiefly  patronized  by 
Henry  VIII.  were  those  who  painted  his  own  por- 
trait. We  know  well  his  burly  form,  ^his  face  of  ani- 
mal comeliness,  his  attitude  of  self-assertion.  He  is 
described  as  accomplished  in  body  and  mind,  though,  in 
the  zenith  of  monarchy,  the  accomplishments  of  a  king 
were  sure  to  be  rated  high,  and  few  could  be  so  uncourtly 
as  to  throw  him  in  wrestling,  beat  him  in  archery,  or 
unhorse  him  in  the  tournament.  His  courage  was  not 
tried  in  battle.  In  time  of  plague  he  showed  great  lack 
of  it;  nor  was  it  needed  in  sending  innocents  to  the 
block,  or  ordering  the  wholesale  execution  of  peasants. 
Self-willed  as  he  was,  it  is  not  unlikely  that  some  of 
his  murders  were  committed  in  order  to  rid  him  of  an 
influence  which  he  had  not  the  moral  force  to  throw  off. 
He  had  a  taste  for  letters,  which  he  showed  in  patroniz- 
ing Erasmus,  but  which  did  not  prevent  him  from  mur- 
dering the  philosopher  and  the  poet  of  his  reign.  He 
had  read  theology,  and  we  find  it  in  his  letters  to  a 
mistress  mingling  with  the  unclean  language  of  his  lust. 
There  is  reason  to  think  that  he  had  a  not  unkindly 
nature,  though  by  absolute  kingship  with  a  full  treasury 
at  nineteen  it  was  spoiled  and  turned  into  a  selfishness 
as  intense  as  ever  had  its  seat  in  the  heart  of  man. 

301 


302  THE   UNITED    KINGDOM  CHAP. 

The  reign  opened  with  executions  which  were  not  the 
less  judicial  murders  because  the  victims  were  vile. 
Empson  and  Dudley  had  been  the  accomplices  of  the  late 

1510  king.  Their  heads  were  flung  to  an  enraged  people. 
The  treasure  which  their  chicanery  had  amassed  Henry 
squandered  royally  in  court  pleasures,  in  pageantry,  and 
at  the  gambling-table,  where  his  privy  accounts  show  that 
he  lost  large  sums.  His  meeting  with  Francis  I.  on  the 

1520  Field  of  the  Cloth  of  Gold  was  a  scene  of  prodigal  folly 
and  waste  which  took  all  lacqueys  with  ravishment  and 
has  betrayed  the  dramatist  into  bombast.  He  bedizened 
himself  with  gold  and  jewels.  He  went  to  war  with  a 
preposterous  train.  In  building,  also,  he  was  lavish. 
Frugality  might  have  made  his  monarchy  absolute. 

Henry's  youth,  however,  his  good  looks,  his  brilliancy, 
his  manner  at  once  frank  and  high,  his  magnificence, 
which  the  people  failed  as  usual  to  see  was  at  their  own 
cost,  all  in  contrast  to  the  severe  bearing  and  unpopular 
habits  of  his  father,  won  for  him  the  heart  of  the  com- 
mons; and  the  monarchy  alone  being  now  left  on  the 
political  stage,  with  nothing  else  to  stand  between  the 
country  and  the  relapse  into  civil  war,  king-worship 
became  a  religion.  England  approached  dangerously 
near  to  the  blind  loyalty  which  prevailed  in  France  after 
the  civil  wars  of  the  Fronde  and  gave  birth  to  the 
splendid  and  fatal  despotism  of  Louis  XIV.  Great 
monarchies  were  being  consolidated  in  Europe,  and  their 
example  acted  on  the  Tudors  as  that  of  Louis  XIV. 
afterwards  acted  on  the  Stuarts. 

The  judicial  murders  of  Empson  and  Dudley  might  be 
palliated  by  their  offences.  Unpalliated  was  the  murder 

1513   of  Suffolk,  whose  only  crime  was  his  Yorkist  title  to  the 


xvi  HENRY   VIII  303 

crown.  The  late  king,  having  got  him  into  his  hands, 
had  left  him  in  prison,  being  restrained  from  putting  him 
to  death  by  a  pledge  which,  it  is  supposed,  his  casuistry 
construed  as  personal  and  not  binding  on  his  successor, 
to  whom  he  bequeathed  the  deed. 

The  early  part  of  the  reign  is  the  government  of 
Wolsey,  the  last,  perhaps  the  greatest,  and  certainly  the 
most  magnificent,  in  the  line  of  ecclesiastical  statesmen. 
Wolsey  had  as  his  key  to  power  the  art  of  playing  on 
a  despot's  humour.  As  he  confessed  on  his  death-bed, 
he  put  his  king  in  the  place  of  his  God,  and  in  the  end 
saw  his  mistake.  His  policy  was  absolutist;  he  aimed 
at  government  without  parliament.  Yet  he  was  patriotic 
in  his  way,  for  he  sought  the  exaltation  of  England. 
He  came  from  the  right  quarter  for  a  vizier;  a  trader's 
son,  self-raised,  owing  everything  to  royal  favour,  he 
could  bow  the  knee  better  than  any  of  the  old  nobility. 
Captivating  the  king  by  his  address,  relieving  him  of 
toil,  and  setting  him  free  for  pleasure  by  his  indefatiga- 
ble industry,  Wolsey  became  practically  king,  and  might 
write  ego  et  rex  mens.  Master  of  church  preferment, 
holding,  besides  his  archbishopric  of  York  and  his  chan- 
cellorship, rich  bishoprics  and  the  rich  abbey  of  St. 
Albans,  he  heaped  on  himself  enormous  wealth.  A 
cardinal's  hat  made  him  a  prince  of  the  church,  and, 
somewhat  to  the  detriment  of  his  foreign  policy,  an 
aspirant  to  the  papacy.  His  magnificence,  his  palaces, 
his  train  of  gentlemen  clad  in  velvet  of  the  cardinal's 
colour,  the  eight  ante-chambers  with  rich  hangings, 
through  which  suitors  passed  to  his  presence,  the  silver 
crosses,  pillars,  and  pole-axes,  carried  before  and  about 
him  when  he  went  abroad,  the  prodigal  splendour  of  the 


304  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

entertainments  which  he  gave  the  king  and  court,  his 
towering  ascendancy  and  monopoly  of  the  royal  smile, 
cut  to  the  heart  the  survivors  of  the  old  nobility,  and 
they  murmured,  probably  they  formed  designs,  against 
the  low-born  minister.  He  quashed  their  designs,  if  he 
did  not  silence  their  murmurs,  by  sending  to  the  block 
1521  their  chief,  the  Duke  of  Buckingham,  who  suffered  on 
the  evidence  of  faithless  servants  for  mere  words  which 
Tudor  tyranny  dubbed  treason.  Their  estates  were  dilapi- 
dated, and  they  were  made  dependent  on  the  favours  of 
the  crown  by  the  expenses  of  the  court  with  its  pageants, 
its  gambling-tables,  and  its  Field  of  the  Cloth  of  Gold. 
The  old  nobility,  however,  continued  to  form  a  party  in 
the  court,  which  struggled  throughout  the  reign  against 
the  party  of  new  men  raised  by  office  or  court  favour, 
such  as  Thomas  Cromwell,  Boleyn,  Paget,  Seymour, 
Audley,  and  Russell,  and  against  the  new  policy  of 
which  the  new  men  were  the  agents. 

The  House  of  Commons  being  elected  under  court  in- 
fluence, while  the  Lords  had  lost  their  retainers  and  their 
spirit,  parliament  on  most  questions  sank  into  an  engine 
of  the  government;  though  the. Tudor  never  ventured  to 
dispense  with  its  authority  as  the  Bourbon  dispensed 
with  the  authority  of  the  States  General,  but  was  even 
fain,  in  his  dealings  with  foreign  powers,  to  shelter  his 
own  responsibility  beneath  its  ostensible  freedom.  At 
the  king's  bidding  it  betrayed  the  safeguards  of  liberty, 
and  came  near  to  moral  self-extinction.  It  passed  the 
most  profligate  of  repudiation  acts,  not  only  releasing 
the  king  from  the  obligation  to  pay  his  debts,  but  com- 
pelling those  whom  he  had  paid  to  refund.  It  attainted 
and  sent  to  the  scaffold  without  trial  or  confession  the 


xvi  HENRY   VIII  305 

victims  of  his  displeasure.  It  multiplied  treasons  so 
that  anyone  who  incurred  the  king's  frown  was  a  traitor. 
It  gave  the  king's  proclamations  the  force  of  law.  It 
enabled  him  to  dispose  of  the  crown  by  will.  It  capped 
its  compliances  by  enacting  in  favour  of  his  infant  heir 
that  a  king  on  coming  of  age  should  have  power  to  cancel 
all  laws  made  during  his  minority.  At  the  name  of  the 
king  members  rose  from  their  seats  and  bowed  as  they 
would  bow  at  the  name  of  God.  Preainbles  of  statutes 
in  this  reign  are  nothing  but  manifestoes  of  the  govern- 
ment. What  noble  or  distinguished  heads  fell  on  the 
scaffold  the  common  people  cared  little.  The  Wars  of  the 
Roses  had  made  them  familiar  with  such  spectacles,  and 
they  were  not  enlightened  enough  to  see  that  the  axe 
which  struck  off  the  head  of  More,  Fisher,  or  Surrey, 
slew  public  liberty  in  his  person.  The  only  tyranny 
which  in  general  they  took  to  heart  was  taxation,  to 
which  the  king,  having  squandered  his  father's  hoard,  was 
compelled  by  his  prodigality  to  resort.  Against  this  a 
spirit  of  resistance  was  shown.  An  exorbitant  demand  1525 
of  Wolsey  on  the  taxpayer  brought  on  a  storm  to  which 
the  king  prudently  and  gracefully  yielded,  leaving  the 
odium  on  his  minister.  The  Tudors  had  tact,  and 
showed  it  especially  in  concession.  There  was  a  Celtic 
strain  in  their  blood.  Statutes  restraining  freedom  in 
the  conveyance  of  property  or  liberty  of  bequest,  as  they 
touched  the  material  interest  of  the  commons,  also  en- 
countered a  certain  amount  of  resistance. 

It  has  been  said  that  the  forms  of  law  were  preserved. 

As  a  rule  they  were,  and  in  the  end  they  proved  most 

valuable.     Yet  even  the  form  of  the  Great  Charter  was 

scarcely  preserved  when  a  man  was  attainted  for  treason 

VOL.  i  —  20 


306  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAK 

and  put  to  death  without  a  hearing.  In  cases  of  treason 
the  courts  in  these  times,  as  Hallarn  says,  were  little 
better  than  the  caverns  of  murderers.  The  real  trial,  if 
it  could  be  so  called,  was  before  the  privy  council,  which 
sat  in  secret,  used  torture,  and  generally  prejudged  the 
case.  A  subservient  judge  and  jury  merely  registered 
the  sentence  of  the  council.  In  the  treatment  of  the 
prisoner  at  the  bar  of  what  was  called  justice,  not  justice 
only  but  decency  was  disregarded.  The  House  of  Lords, 
which  tried  peers,  was  a  hardly  less  passive  tool  of  the 
government  than  the  common  tribunals.  The  noblest 
and  most  innocent  head  was  as  much  at  the  mercy  of  the 
despot  in  England  as  at  Constantinople.  Verdicts,  even 
of  the  peers,  are  worth  no  more  as  historical  evidences 
than  the  preambles  of  statutes. 

Was  the  Tudor  government  popular?  Its  eulogists 
say  that  as  it  had  no  standing  army  but  the  yeomen  of 
the  guard,  it  must  have  rested  on  the  free  allegiance  of  a 
loving  people.  It  had,  besides  the  yeomen  of  the  guard, 
its  park  of  artillery,  the  forts,  and  their  garrisons.  It 
had  some  ships  of  war.  It  could  hire  mercenaries  at 
need.  It  had  in  its  interest  the  local  authorities,  mili- 
tary as  well  as  civil,  the  old  feudal  nobility  having  been 
supplanted  by  a  new  nobility  of  crown  favour,  and  the 
troops  of  retainers  having  been  dissolved.  Buckingham, 
about  the  last  feudal  magnate  who  could  have  made 
head  against  the  power  of  the  monarchy,  was  put  to 
1521  death  early  in  the  reign.  Insurrection  in  the  middle 
and  lower  classes  was  thus  deprived  of  its  almost  indis- 
pensable leaders.  Popular,  no  doubt,  the  government 
was  as  a  security  against  the  dreaded  renewal  of  civil 
war.  It  was  popular  as  being  national,  not  feudal. 


xvi  HENRY    VIII  307 

Aristocratic  opposition  to  it  had  been  broken;  no  other 
opposition  had  been  formed;  and  the  middle  classes,  hav- 
ing turned  their  minds  away  from  politics  to  commerce 
and  the  acquisition  of  wealth,  were  ready  to  welcome  a 
strong  rule.  Yet  there  were  insurrections,  serious,  and 
not  easily  put  down.  Opinion  being  thoroughly  fettered, 
we  have  no  means  of  knowing  what  Englishmen  in 
general  really  thought  of  their  king. 

The  first  two  decades  of  the  reign  are  full  of  diplo- 
matic intrigue  and  wars  of  royal  rivalry.  Three  young 
kings,  Henry  VIII. ,  Francis  I.,  and  Charles  V.,  who 
had  all  been  competitors  for  the  august  title  of  Csesar, 
made  Europe  the  gambling-table  of  their  restless,  sense- 
less, and  unprincipled  ambition.  The  wars  were  with- 
out object  or  substantial  result,  while,  being  carried  on 
largely  with  armies  of  freebooting  mercenaries,  they  in- 
flicted on  the  people  miseries  untold,  culminating  in  the 
sack  of  Rome  by  the  imperial  hordes,  one  of  the  great  1527 
horrors  of  history.  Diplomatists,  of  course,  were  in  re- 
quest, and  diplomatists  of  the  kind  afterwards  described 
by  Wooton,  when  he  said  that  an  ambassador  was  a  man 
sent  to  lie  abroad  for  the  service  of  his  country;  men 
perfect  in  their  sinister  craft,  consummate  masters  of 
intrigue  and  dissimulation,  ignoble  precursors  of  the 
noble  profession  which  has  in  better  times  made  diplo- 
macy on  the  whole  a  ministry  of  justice,  peace,  and  good- 
will among  nations.  Now  comes  the  era  of  espionage, 
bribery,  treachery,  and  political  assassination.  Which- 
ever of  the  three  royal  gamesters  was  for  the  time  the 
winner  had  the  other  two  against  him.  Here  we  have 
that  diplomatic  idol,  the  balance  of  power,  which  has  cost 
the  nations  dear. 


308  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

Henry's  passion  was  vanity;  he  loved  to  think  himself 
the  arbiter  of  Europe.  At  one-time  he  had  formed  a 
wild  design  of  renewing  the  enterprise  of  Henry  V.,  the 
memory  of  whose  fatal  victories  the  nation  still  cherished, 
and  asserting  in  arms  his  claim  to  the  crown  of  France. 
He  laid  down  his  money  freely  and  was  fooled  by  both 
his  allies  in  turn,  especially  by  the  politic  and  cold- 
blooded Charles  V.  He  paid  no  heed  to  the  sagacious 
adviser,  who  bade  him  turn  his  eyes  from  the  field  of 
empty  and  fleeting  glory  in  France  to  that  of  solid  and 
lasting  acquisition  in  the  north  of  his  own  island.  By 
quarrelling  with  France  he  brought  down  upon  himself, 
as  a  matter  of  course,  an  attack  from  Scotland,  whose 

1613  wires  France  always  pulled;  and  the  victory  of  Flodden, 
not  followed  up  by  conquest,  remained  a  splendid  victory 
and  nothing  more.  An  attempt  was  made  in  a  better 
spirit  to  provide  for  the  union  of  the  crowns  by  the  mar- 
riage of  Henry's  infant  heir  with  the  infant  heiress  of 
Scotland.  But  through  Scotch  jealousy  and  faction, 
aided  by  Henry's  arrogance,  it  failed,  and  a  renewal  of 
the  senseless  war  of  devastation,  with  the  barbarous  sack- 

1542  ing  of  Edinburgh,  deepened  the  gulf  of  hatred  between 
the  two  sections  of  the  English  race. 

The  revived  monarchy,  however,  did  not  fail  to  show 
its  force  within  the  islands.  A  dynasty  partly  Welsh 
aptly  completed  the  Welsh  union.  By  a  series  of 
statutes  the  principality  was  politically  incorporated  with 
England,  a  limit  was  put  to  the  irregular  domination  of 
the  Lords  Marchers,  all  Wales  was  made  shire  ground, 

1536  with  English  laws,  local  self-government  after  the  Eng- 
lish model,  and  parliamentary  representation;  the  only 
distinction  of  importance  left  being  that  Wales  was  not 


xvz  HENRY   VIII  309 

included  in  the  circuits  of  the  English  judges,  but  had 
special  sessions  of  its  own.  Political  incorporation, 
however,  did  not  efface  the  difference  of  language  or  of 
character.  These  the  Welsh  hills  preserved  and  in  some 
measure  preserve  now. 

Ireland  also  felt  the  new  force.  Hapless  Ireland,  and 
hapless  England  in  her  dealings  with  Ireland,  and  in 
all  the  bitterness,  trouble,  and  danger  which  these 
dealings  have  entailed!  If  there  is  a  case  in  which 
historical  fate  may  be  accused  rather  than  man,  rather, 
at  least,  than  any  single  man  or  set  of  men,  it  is  the 
case  of  England  and  Ireland.  Had  Anglo-Norman  con- 
quest of  Ireland  been  complete,  as  was  Norman  conquest 
of  England,  it  would  have  been  followed  by  fusion 
of  the  conquering  with  the  conquered  race.  Under- 
taken, not  by  government,  but  by  private  adventure, 
it  was  left  incomplete.  Private  adventure  had  neither 
force  nor  desire  to  penetrate  mountain,  bog,  and  forest. 
The  centre  of  English  power  was  far  away.  The  road 
lay  through  Welsh  mountains  long  unsubdued.  The 
arms  of  the  monarchy  were  diverted  to  French  fields. 
Alone  of  the  kings,  Richard  II.  led  an  army  to  Ireland, 
and  he  returned  from  a  futile  expedition  to  find  his 
kingdom  lost.  The  sojourn  of  Lionel,  Duke  of  Clarence, 
son  of  Edward  III.,  produced  a  momentary  reformation. 
"Because,"  says  Sir  John  Davies,  "the  people  of  this 
land,  both  English  and  Irish,  out  of  a  natural  pride,  did 
ever  love  and  desire  to  be  governed  by  great  persons." 
If  British  monarchs  could  only  have  seen  this  and  done 
their  duty!  The  channel  over  which  the  Dublin  and 
Holyhead  packet  now  so  swiftly  shoots  was  then  a  con- 
siderable sea.  The  result  was  an  Anglo-Norman  Pale 


310  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

of  which  Dublin  was  the  centre.  Outside  the  Pale  the 
septs  remained  in  their  primitive  state,  with  the  clan 
system,  no  central  or  regular  government,  no  cities, 
scarcely  any  agriculture,  a  pastoral  and  unsettled  life, 
and  general  lawlessness  under  the  name  of  Brehon  law. 
A  ruthless  war  of  races  was  always  going  on.  As  the 
hostile  Indian  is  to  the  American  frontiersman,  so  was 
the  native  Celt  to  the  Anglo-Norman  of  the  Pale.  At 
the  same  time  there  was  constant  war  among  the  tribes. 
Nothing  is  more  cruel  or  more  hideous  than  a  protracted 
struggle  of  semi-civilization  with  savagery.  A  native 
was  to  the  Englishman  as  a  wolf,  and  the  native  skene 
spared  no  Englishman.  Nothing  could  prosper.  In  the 
little  English  sea-board  towns,  petty  commonwealths  in 
themselves,  there  was  order  and  some  commerce.  Gal- 
way  preserves  in  her  architecture  and  her  legends  the 
picturesque  and  romantic  traces  of  her  trade  with  Spain. 
Elsewhere  was  nothing  but  turbulence  and  havoc.  A 
parliament  there  was  in  the  Pale,  but  it  was  a  scarecrow. 
Judges  there  were  in  the  Pale,  after  the  English  model, 
but  they  had  little  power  to  uphold  law.  The  church 
was  feeble,  coarse,  and  almost  worthless  as  an  instrument 
of  civilization.  What  there  was  of  it  was  rather  monas- 
tic than  parochial,  the  monastery  being  a  fortalice,  and, 
in  a  general  reign  of  crime,  perhaps  drawing  endowment 
from  remorse.  Only  the  friars  were  zealous  in  preaching. 
The  church  seems  not  to  have  acted  as  a  united  body,  to 
have  held  no  synods,  and  to  have  been  divided,  like  the 
population,  by  the  race  line.  Ecclesiastics  fought  like 
laymen,  and  appear  to  have  been  as  little  revered.  A 
chieftain  pleaded  as  an  excuse  for  burning  down  a  cathe- 
dral that  he  had  thought  the  archbishop  was  in  it.  In 


xvi  HENRY   VIII  311 

the  Celtic  districts  the  calendar  of  ecclesiastical  crimes, 
or  crimes  against  ecclesiastics,  given  by  the  Four  Masters 
between  1500  and  1535,  comprises  Barry  More,  killed  by 
his  cousin  the  archdeacon  of  Cloyne,  who  was  himself 
hanged  by  Thomas  Barry;  Donald  Kane,  abbot  of  Macos- 
quin,  hanged  by  Donald  O'Kane,  who  was  himself 
hanged;  John  Burke,  killed  in  the  monastery  of  Jubber- 
patrick;  Donaghmoyne  church,  set  on  fire  by  McMahon 
during  mass ;  Hugh  Maguinness,  abbot  of  Newry,  killed 
by  the  sons  of  Donald  Maguinness;  the  prior  of  Gallen, 
murdered  by  Tuiiough  Oge  Macloughlin ;  O'Quillan 
murdered,  and  the  church  of  Dunboe  burned,  by  O'Kane. 

Some  of  the  Anglo-Norman  barons,  finding  tribal  an- 
archy even  more  lawless  than  feudalism,  doffed  the 
hauberk,  donned  the  saffron  mantle  of  the  Irish  tribe, 
and  became  chiefs  of  bastard  septs.  The  crown,  by  en- 
actments which  seem  like  an  inhuman  perpetuation  of 
the  estrangement  between  the  races,  strove  to  prevent  this 
lapse  of  the  Englishry  into  barbarism,  but  strove  in  vain. 

While  England  was  torn  and  her  government  paralyzed 
by  the  Wars  of  the  Roses,  the  Pale  was  reduced  to  a  dis- 
trict comprising  parts  of  four  counties,  and  defended  by 
a  ditch.  Had  there  been  among  the  Celts  any  national 
unity  or  power  of  organization,  here  was  their  chance  of 
winning  back  their  lands.  But  they  were  fighting  among 
themselves  as  fiercely  as  they  fought  against  the  Pale. 
As  a  learned  Irish  writer  says,  patriotism  did  not  exist; 
there  was  no  sentiment  broader  than  that  of  the  clan ;  nor 
was  the  rival  clan  less  an  object  of  enmity  than  the 
Englishry.  Soon  the  chance  of  the  Celts  was  lost.  Out 
of  the  wreck  of  the  aristocracy  in  the  civil  war  rose  the 
powerful  monarchy  of  the  Tudors. '  The  thoughts  of 


312  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

Henry  VII.  had  been  turned  to  Ireland,  where  the  Pale 
was  Yorkist  and  had  been  the  scene  of  Yorkist  con- 
spiracy. Compelled  perhaps  in  the  infancy  of  his  power 
to  prefer  policy  to  arms,  he  sought  to  govern  Ireland 
through  its  local  chiefs,  the  greatest  of  whom  was  Kil- 
dare,  the  head  of  the  bastard  sept  of  •  Geraldine,  saying, 
when  he  was  told  that  all  Ireland  could  not  govern 
Kildare,  that  if  it  were  so  Kildare  must  govern  all  Ire- 
land. He,  however,  sent  over  a  strong  deputy  in  the 
1494  person  of  Sir  Edward  Poynings,  and  brought  the  parlia- 
ment of  Ireland,  which  was  merely  that  of  the  Pale,  under 
the  control  of  the  English  government  by  two  enact- 
ments, one  requiring  all  Irish  legislation  to  receive  the 
1494  previous  assent  of  the  English  council,  the  other  making 
all  English  laws  operative  in  Ireland.  Henry  VIII., 
strong  in  the  power  which  his  father  had  bequeathed  to 
1542  him,  took  the  title  of  king  of  Ireland  in  place  of  that  of 
lord  under  the  pope,  and  resumed  the  task  of  conquest. 
But  he  also  was  drawn  away  by  his  vanity  to  chimerical 
adventure  on  the  continent,  and  the  Irish  service  was 
starved.  Soon,  to  the  deadly  animosities  of  race  in  that 
island  of  strife,  was  to  be  added  the  deadly  animosity  of 
religion. 

The  event  of  the  reign,  however,  is  that  which  here  is 

not  very  aptly  called  the  Reformation.     The  time  for  the 

revolt  of  the  Teutonic  nations  against  the  Latin  theocracy 

was  now  fully  come.     The  papacy,  after  its  return  from 

1408    Avignon  to  Rome,  had  in  some  measure  recovered    its 

1378-  authority.      But  it  had  since  been  disgraced  by  schism, 

1439   by  the  portentous  appearance  of  three  rival  popes,  by  the 

arraignment  of  its  scandalous  chiefs  and  the  exposure  of 

their  corruption  before  general  councils,  by  the  monstrous 


xvi  HENRY    VIII  313 

vices  of  the  Borgias,  the  outrageous  secularism  of  Julius  II., 
and  the  paganism  of  Leo  X.  Cultured  and  sceptical  in- 
telligence with  the  pen  of  Erasmus,  the  Voltaire  of  his 
day,  had  mocked  at  its  superstitions,  its  thaumaturgy, 
its  false  miracles  and  apocryphal  relics,  its  ignorant  and 
obscurantist  monkery.  Erasmus  had  made  a  satirical 
pilgrimage  to  the  shrine  of  the  great  ecclesiastical  martyr, 
Thomas  Becket.  In  terrible  earnest  Luther,  Zwingli,  and 
the  young  Calvin,  representatives  of  the  serious  spirit  of 
the  Teuton  and  his  love  of  truth,  had  given  the  signal  for 
revolt  from  the  falsehood  and  the  formalism  which  were 
destructive  of  spiritual  life.  Northern  Germany  and 
Switzerland  had  renounced  the  papal  faith  and  rule. 
Some  time  before,  the  seeds  of  Wycliffism  had  been  carried 
by  students  to  Bohemia,  who  in  her  own  wild  way  had 
raised  the  standard  of  religious  rebellion,  and  had  given 
martyrs  to  reform  in  the  persons  of  John  Huss  and  Jerome  1415 
of  Prague.  Catholics  of  the  more  liberal-  and  evangelical  1416 
school,  such  as  Contarini  and  Pole,  were  ready  not  only 
to  reform  abuses,  but  to  make  doctrinal  concessions  to 
protestantism,  even  to  recognize  as  fundamental  the  doc- 
trine of  justification  by  faith.  For  the  reunion  of  Chris- 
tendom they  looked  forward  to  a  general  council.  Their 
hope  might  have  been  fulfilled  and  Christendom  might 
have  been  spared  two  centuries  of  havoc,  material  and 
moral,  the  moral  worse  than  the  material,  if  the  wealth 
and  earthly  greatness  of  an  enormously  rich  and  powerful 
priesthood  had  not  been  bound  up  with  papal  supremacy, 
priestly  control  of  the  spiritual  life  through  the  sacra- 
ments, transubstantiation,  purgatory,  and  the  confessional; 
if,  it  may  be  added,  there  had  not  been  a  vital  bond  be- 
tween priestcraft  and  kingcraft,  between  papal  supremacy 


314  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

and  royal  absolutism,  between  spiritual  thraldom  and  po- 
litical submission.  As  it  was,  the  hope  of  Contarini  and 
Pole  was  vain.  When  the  general  council,  so  much 
desired,  came,  it  was  not  a  council  of  healing  and  reunion, 
but  the  council  of  Trent. 

SO 

In  England  the  revolution  was  less  doctrinal  than  po- 
litical and  social.  Lollardism,  if  not  dead,  had  slunk 
into  obscurity.  Of  Wycliffe,  there  remained  in  Eng- 
land little  more  than  his  Bible,  which,  like  his  doc- 
trines, was  proscribed.  In  the  reign  of  Henry  VI., 
Pecock,  a  liberal  divine,  the  Arnold  or  Stanley  of  his 
day,  had  essayed  to  preach  a  rational  and  comprehensive 
religion,  but  he  had  been  at  once  put  down.  The  people 
in  general,  in  the  rural  districts  at  least,  still  were, 
and  long  continued  to  be,  attached  in  a  dull  way  to  the 
old  religion,  with  its  ritual  and  its  festivals,  with  its 
transubstantiation  and  its  seven  sacraments,  with  its 
purgatory  and  .its  prayers  for  the  dead.  Nor  can  we 
wonder  at  its  hold  when  we  see  its  resurrection,  fleeting 
though  it  may  be,  in  our  own  day.  The  chief  religious 
movement  was  among  the  men  of  intellect,  such  as  More, 
Colet,  Linacre,  Grocyn,  and  Pole,  of  whose  circle  Eras- 
mus, when  he  paid  them  a  visit,  was  the  centre.  These 
men  looked  to  the  sun  of  learning  and  education  to  chase 
away  the  shadows  of  superstition ;  warred  rather  against 
monkish  stupidity  and  torpor  than  against  anything  in 
the  creed  or  constitution  of  the  church;  and  hoped  that 
enlightened  authority,  assuming  the  guidance  of  reform, 
would  make  the  past  slide  quietly  into  the  future. 

To  the  English  people  in  general  the  pope,  though 
undisputed  head  of  Christendom  and  holder  of  the  keys, 
had  always  been  a  foreign  power,  revered,  perhaps,  and 


xvi  HENRY   VIII  315 

dreaded,  but  not  greatly  loved.  The  tribute  which  he 
extorted,  and  which  the  exigencies  of  his  ambitious  quar- 
rels made  more  grinding,  had  always  been  grudgingly 
paid,  particularly  when  it  took  the  scandalous  form  of  the 
appropriation  of  English  benefices  to  Italians  who  drew 
the  incomes  at  Rome.  Resistance  to  papal  abuse,  fiscal 
and  in  the  way  of  patronage,  had  been  commenced  by 
Grosseteste  in  the  reign  of  Henry  III.  It  was  continued 
at  intervals  from  that  time.  Edward  I.  had  compelled 
the  clergy  to  submit  to  national  taxation.  The  statute  1350 
of  Provisors  had  barred  the  appropriation  of  benefices  by 
the  pope,  that  of  Praemunire  had  barred  papal  interfer-  1393 
ence  by  means  of  bulls  and  legatine  commissions ;  though 
the  statute  of  Provisors  was  much  evaded,  the  crown 
going  shares  with  the  pope,  while  the  statute  of  Prae- 
munire  was  at  that  time  unequivocally  set  at  naught  by 
Wolsey's  commission  as  legate.  The  pope  still  drew  his 
first-fruits  from  English  benefices;  he  still  received  his 
Peter's  pence;  the  Roman  Curia  still  sold  to  English 
suitors  ecclesiastical  judgments  and  dispensations  from 
the  canon  law,  particularly  from  the  law  of  marriage. 
The  crown  having  the  power  of  granting  licenses  in  mort- 
main, and  chancellors  being  churchmen,  the  wealth  of  the 
church,  notwithstanding  the  statute,  had  continued  to 
grow.  Her  estates,  apart  from  tithe,  formed  by  this  time 
no  small  portion  of  the  landed  property  of  the  realm. 
They  were  ever  on  the  increase;  they  could  never  come 
back  into  circulation ;  and  as  of  their  possessors  a  great 
many  were  drones,  they  were  an  incubus  on  the  industry 
of  the  nation.  In  the  Reformation,  economical  as  well 
as  spiritual  and  intellectual  causes  were  largely  at  work. 
Church  courts  also  excited  intense  hatred  by  their  vexa- 


316  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

tious  enforcement  of  an  effete  system  of  discipline  for  the 
sake  of  the  fees  and  fines;  by  their  interference  with 
wills,  a  province  of  law  which  they  had  usurped ;  by  the 
prying  tyranny  of  the  official  harpies  who  lived  on  them; 
and  at  this  time  by  their  inquisitorial  persecutions  of 
what  they  and  the  law  styled  heresy.  The  inhabitants  of 
the  cities,  especially,  vexed  in  their  purses  and  in  their 
persons,  learnt  to  hate  the  clergy,  and,  if  active-minded, 
to  question  the  clerical  creed.  A  citizen  of  London, 
confined  on  a  charge  of  heresy  in  the  bishops'  prison, 
was  found  hanged  in  his  cell.  It  was  given  out  that  he 
had  committed  suicide.  But  the  chancellor  of  the  diocese 
was  indicted  for  murder,  and  it  was  held  that  if  the  case 
came  to  trial  before  a  common  jury  there  would  be  little 
chance  of  his  acquittal,  since,  as  a  bishop  said,  London 
juries  were  so  prejudiced  against  the  church  that  they 
would  have  found  Abel  guilty  of  the  murder  of  Cain. 
The  immunities  of  the  clerical  order  from  the  criminal 
law,  though  by  this  time  reduced,  still  sheltered  criminal 
clerks  from  justice.  The  noxious  privilege  of  sanctuary 
still  prevailed.  Clerical  corruption  and  indolence,  the 
sure  offspring  of  a  plethoric  establishment;  the  concu- 
binage to  which  the  rule  of  celibacy  drove  men,  whose 
passions  it  could  not  extinguish,  and  of  which  popes  and 
prelates,  Wolsey  among  them,  set  the  example ;  the  abuse 
of  church  patronage  as  payment  for  secular  services,  or 
for  the  purposes  of  nepotism;  the  pluralities;  the  sine- 
curism;  the  robbery  of  parishes  by  the  monastic  appro- 
priation of  tithes;  the  knavish  mendicity  of  the  friars; 
the  worldly  greed  and  pride  of  the  whole  clerical  order, 
could  not  fail  to  produce  their  effect  on  opinion.  These 
things  stirred  the  people  more  than  theological  doubt 


xvi  HENRY   VIII  317 

or  spiritual  aspiration.  Yet  it  is  truly  said  that  there 
was  growing  up,  especially  among  the  middle  classes  in 
the  cities,  a  plain  morality  \vhich  revolted  from  the  for- 
malities, hypocrisies,  and  casuistries  of  the  church.  The 
printing  press  was  now  in  full  activity.  Opinion  had 
become  popular  and  European.  The  continental  move- 
ment could  not  in  any  case  have  failed  at  last  to  make 
its  way  to  England. 

In  Catholicism,  however,  there  was  some  salt  of  genu- 
ine religion  still  left.  There  was  a  spiritual  life  which 
was  still  essentially  sacerdotal  and  sacramental.  There 
was  an  intense  attachment  to  the  unity  of  the  church. 
Catholicism  will  have  its  martyrs;  it  will  have  popular 
risings  in  its  favour;  it  will  presently  have  its  revival 
and  its  self-reform.  Even  in  our  own  day  it  will  draw 
back  to  it  gifted  and  cultivated  minds. 

Wolsey,  an  English  Leo  X.,  was,  like  his  Italian 
counterpart,  a  loose  liver,  and  as  a  non-resident  arch- 
bishop a  signal  instance  of  ecclesiastical  abuse.  But, 
like  Leo,  he  was  a  friend  of  learning,  and  thus  a  reformer 
in  the  intellectual  way.  Nothing  was  dearer  to  his  heart 
than  his  foundations  at  Oxford  and  Ipswich.  He  patron- 
ized the  new  studies;  nor  does  he  seem  in  the  choice  of 
teachers  for  his  colleges  to  have  shrunk  from  the  new 
ideas.  Probably,  like  Leo,  he  despised  rather  than  hated 
the  religious  enthusiasm  of  the  Reformers.  His  master, 
on  the  other  hand,  was  a  strong  papist,  had  descended 
from  his  throne  to  enter  the  lists  of  controversy  against 
Luther,  and  for  the  aid  of  his  royal  pen  had  received 
from  the  pope,  and  was  proud  to  bear,  the  title  of  1521 
Defender  of  the  Faith.  Protestantism,  connected  as  it 
was  with  social  and  political  innovation,  could  not  fail 


318  THE   UNITED  KINGDOM  CHAP. 

to  repel  an  absolutist  monarch.  A  convert  to  its 
doctrines  this  monarch  never  was.  Assuredly  if  by 
protestantism  is  meant  freedom  of  religious  thought  and 
liberty  of  private  judgment,  nobody  was  ever  less  a 
protestant  than  Henry  Tudor.  In  the  midst  of  his  own 
ecclesiastical  innovations  he  offers  to  orthodoxy  a  holo- 
caust of  Anabaptists.  An  Act  for  the  punishment  of 
1534  heresy  went  hand  in  hand  with  his  renunciation  of  the 
pope. 

The  sole  cause  of  Henry's  secession  from  the  papacy 
and  of  religious  revolution  so  far  as  he  personally 
was  concerned  was  his  desire  of  a  divorce.  Divorce,  it 
is  called,  and  Pope  Clement  is  arraigned  for  having 
refused,  from  fear  of  the  Emperor's  wrath,  to  exercise  the 
power  which  he  is  assumed  to  have  possessed  of  dissolv- 
ing the  marriage  of  Henry  with  Catherine  of  Aragon, 
that  there  might  be  a  male  heir  to  the  throne.  The  pope 
had  no  such  power.  Marriage  in  the  church  of  Rome  is 
a  sacrament,  and  when  solemnized  between  baptized  per- 
sons and  consummated,  if  not  even  without  consumma- 
tion, is  indissoluble.  All  that  the  pope  could  do  was  to 
declare  the  marriage  with  Catherine  void  from  the  begin- 
ning, on  the  ground  that  Catherine  had  been  the  widow 
of  Henry's  brother  Arthur,  and  that  this  was  a  degree  of 
affinity  beyond  the  power  of  papal  dispensation,  being  pro- 
hibited by  the  law  of  God,  whereby  he  would  have  been 
reversing  the  act  of  his  predecessor  in  the  chair  of  infalli- 
bility, who  had  granted  and  confirmed  the  dispensation. 
It  is  true  that  the  dissolution  of  marriages  with  liberty  of 
marrying  again  on  pretended  grounds  of  affinity  or  pre- 
contract had  been  common,  and  that  the  church,  the  pro- 
fessed guardian  of  matrimony,  had  thus  pandered  largely 


xvi  HENKY   VJII  319 

to  license  among  the  classes  which  could  afford  to  pay 
for  her  decrees.  But  the  voidance  of  a  marriage  on  the 
ground  of  affinity  or  pre-contract  is  a  different  thing  from 
a  divorce. 

Whether  weariness  of  Catherine  of  Aragon,  a  wife 
six  years  older  than  her  husband,  and  now  without 
hope  of  male  offspring,  had  preceded  in  Henry's  mind 
his  passion  for  the  pretty,  coy,  and  artful  maid  of  honour, 
Anne  Boleyn,  is  a  question  alike  insoluble  and  unim- 
portant. Nor  can  we  tell  whether  he  succeeded  in  self- 
mystification  so  far  as  to  persuade  himself  that  he  was 
moved  by  a  scruple  of  conscience  to  gratify  his  weariness 
of  one  woman  and  his  passion  for  another.  The  letter  to 
Anne  Boleyn  in  which  he  blends  theology  with  the  coarse 
outpouring  of  his  passion,  is  probably  a  fair  key  to  his 
state  of  mind.  He  had  lived  with  Catherine  for  eighteen 
years  without  misgiving.  She  had  been  a  good  and 
faithful  wife  to  him,  and  she  had  borne  him  several 
children,  though  Mary  alone  had  lived.  With  con- 
tinence he  cannot  be  credited.  He  owned  to  one  natural 
son.  In  his  ways  of  compassing  his  object  conscience 
assuredly  had  no  part.  He  first  tried  a  collusive  suit 
before  the  ecclesiastical  authorities  of  his  own  realm. 
As  this  device  failed  of  effect,  he  plied  all  the  arts  of  a 
sinister  diplomacy  through  unscrupulous  envoys  at  the 
papal  court.  He  extracted  opinions  in  his  favour  from  his 
own  universities  by  bullying,  from  foreign  universities  by 
political  influence  or  corruption.  He  suggested  that  the 
queen  should  be  induced  to  take  in  common  with  him 
monastic  vows,  and  that  when  the  nunnery  door  had 
closed  upon  her  he  should  be  released  by  the  pope.  He 
lied  to  the  pope.  He  lied  to  Catherine.  He  lied  to  his 


320  THE   UNITED  KINGDOM  CHAP. 

people,  whose  hearts  were  with  the  wronged  wife,  while 
their  commerce  dreaded  a  rupture  with  the  Emperor, 
Catherine's  nephew,  who  was  master  of  Flanders,  their 
principal  mart.  If  we  may  trust  the  chronicle,  he  most 
solemnly  assured  a  great  public  assembly  that  he  loved 
Catherine  above  all  women,  and  vowed  that  nothing 
but  his  conscientious  scruples  prevented  him  from  keep- 
ing her  as  his  wife;  this  at  a  time  when  he  was  moving 
heaven  and  earth  to  get  rid  of  her,  and  declaring  his 
love  to  another  woman.  He  tried  to  get  into  his  hands, 
through  his  influence  over  Catherine,  a  document  impor- 
tant to  her  case  which  was  in  the  keeping  of  her  nephew, 
with  the  evident  intention  of  destroying  it.  He  insulted 
his  wife  and  unmasked  himself  by  openly  installing  in  the 
palace  his  paramour  as  a  rival  queen.  The  draft  dispen- 
sation for  his  marriage  to  Anne  submitted  to  the  pope, 
and  the  table  of  affinities  engrafted  on  a  subsequent 
1534  Act  of  Succession,  with  evident  relation  to  his  marriage 
with  Anne,  coincide  with  the  report  current  at  the  time, 
that  Anne's  sister,  Mary  Boleyn,  had  been  Henry's  mis- 
tress ;  in  which  case  the  conscience  of  the  king,  if  he  was 
to  be  believed,  was  driving  him  out  of  a  wedlock  of  pro- 
hibited affinity  into  a  wedlock  of  incest.  This  would 
hardly  have  been  possible  in  any  age  but  that  of  the 
Borgias  and  Julius  II.  The  conduct  of  Catherine,  nobly 
firm  in  maintaining  her  right,  the  right  of  her  daughter, 
and  that  of  all  wives,  yet  loyal  and  gentle,  is  the  redeem- 
ing element  in  a  vortex  of  villainy  and  falsehood.  The 
heart  of  the  people  was  with  her  and  against  the  new 
wife,  even  in  cities  such  as  London,  which  were  the 
centres  of  the  new  opinions. 

The   pope,    of   course,    could   not  be    deceived   as   to 


xvi  HENRY    VIJI  321 

Henry's  motive,  or  as  to  the  moral  rights  of  the  case. 
But  what  he  would  have  done  had  he  not  been  in  awe 
of  the  Emperor  we  cannot  say.  He  was  placed  between 
two  millstones.  He  was  apparently  ready  to  connive  at 
anything  if  he  could  only  escape  responsibility.  Wolsey, 
in  the  cause  of  his  master's  passion,  plied  all  his  diplo- 
matic arts.  But  the  upshot  was  a  legatine  commission  1528 
in  which  Campeggio  was  paired  with  Wolsey.  Cam- 
peggio,  Catherine  resolutely  refusing  to  take  monastic 
vows,  went  with  his  colleague  through  the  form  of  a 
trial,  in  which  Henry,  to  exalt  his  royal  dignity,  appeared 
as  a  suitor  before  a  foreign  tribunal  in  his  own  domin-  1529 
ions.  Catherine,  resisting  all  insidious  overtures,  ap- 
pealed against  the  tribunal,  and  the  end,  after  a  tissue 
of  chicanery,  was  an  avocation  of  the  cause  to  Rome. 

The  vizier  having  failed,  though  through  no  fault  of 
his  own,  to  do  what  the  sultan  wanted,  his  head  fell.  1529 
Wolsey,  having  served  the  king  all  these  years  with 
untiring  industry  and  unscrupulous  devotion,  faced  for 
him  the  hatred  of  the  people,  lifted  him  to  a  height 
among  kings  to  which  he  never  could  have  raised  him- 
self, was  not  only  cast  down  from  power  but  disgraced, 
not  only  disgraced  but  prosecuted  under  the  statute  of 
Prsemunire,  condemned,  and  stripped  of  his  goods.  The 
pretext  was  his  exercise  of  legatine  power,  which  Henry, 
for  his  own  purposes,  had  used  his  influence  at  Rome  to 
procure  for  him.  Henry  and  Anne  Boleyn  went  to  York 
Place,  Wolsey's  palace,  to  gloat  with  greedy  eyes  over 
their  rich  spoil.  Ipswich  was  seized  by  the  royal  robber. 
The  cardinal's  college  at  Oxford  escaped  after  an  hour  of 
extreme  peril  with  the  loss  of  a  part  of  its  endowment, 
while  the  title  of  Founder  was  usurped  by  the  king. 

VOL.    1—21 


322  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

1530  Adversity  restored  Wolsey  to  himself.  He  went  down 
to  his  diocese  of  York,  did  his  duty  there  as  an  arch- 
bishop, led  a  religious  life,  and  won  the  hearts  of  his 
people.  Henry,  with  a  lingering  spark  of  good  feeling, 
or  possibly  from  a  lurking  fear  of  a  man  whose  powerful 
mind  he  knew,  had  kept  on  the  mask  towards  Wolsey, 
and  sent  him  a  ring  as  pledge  of  regard.  But  the  woman 
at  his  side  fancied  that  Wolsey  had  crossed  her  design, 
while  the  members  of  the  aristocratic  party  at  court,  to 
which  the  plebeian  statesman  was  with  good  reason  hate- 
ful, alarmed  by  his  popularity  in  the  north,  and  fearing 
that  he  might  recover  the  king's  favour,  determined  to 
finish  the  work.  Setting  on  foot  a  plot  of  which  a 
faithless  dependent  was  probably  the  instrument,  they  pro- 
cured the  cardinal's  arrest  for  high  treason  and  were 
bringing  him  from  Yorkshire  as  a  prisoner,  with  the 
intention,  probably,  of  dealing  with  him  as  he  had  dealt 
with  Buckingham,  when  he  was  snatched  from  their 

1530  grasp  by  death.  "  If  I  had  served  God  as  diligently  as  I 
have  done  the  king,  He  would  not  have  given  me  over  in 
my  grey  hairs ;  "  so  said  Wolsey  in  his  last  hour.  God, 
whom  he  had  not  served,  had  not  deserted  him  in  the  day 
of  his  misfortune,  making  it  his  better  day.  The  touch- 
ing fidelity  of  Cavendish  and  others  of  Wolsey's  house- 
hold to  their  fallen  master  partly  redeemed  the  age. 

Seeing  that  he  had  been  duped,  and  that  there  was  no 
hope  from  Rome,  where  the  Emperor  upheld  the  cause 

Iwu2 

or  of  his  aunt,  Henry  rushed  into  a  private  marriage.  In 
so  doing  he  broke  with  the  papacy,  and  though  he  tried 
to  repair  the  breach,  negotiation  proved  vain.  At  a  later 

1535  stage  of  the  contest  the  pope,  Paul  III.,,  excommunicated 

1536  him,  and  at  last  pronounced  sentence  of  deposition. 


*     ' 
xvt  HENRY   VIII  323 

The  rupture  was  complete.  Teutonic  England,  with 
other  Teutonic  nations,  secedes  from  Latin  Christendom. 
Europe  will  henceforth  be  no  longer  a  catholic  federation, 
but  a  group  of  nations,  each  moving  on  its  own  path, 
intellectually  as  well  as  politically,  and  with  no  bond, 
apart  from  special  alliances,  but  that  of  a  common 
morality,  the  main  articles  of  which  survived  the  schism, 
and  so  much  as  there  might  be  of  regard  for  international 
law.  Religion  is  no  longer  universal  but  national,  and 
instead  of  being  a  link  of  union  is  often  a  -source  of 
mortal  enmity  between  nations.  The  great  catholic  mon- 
archies remain  grouped  round  the  papacy,  though  they 
also  are  more  national  than  before.  Opposed  to  them 
will  be  the  protestant  powers,  without  unity  of  creed, 
but  linked  together  by  a  common  enmity  and  a  common 
peril. 

The  divorce  was  to  be  pronounced  and  the  new  mar- 
riage was  to  be  confirmed  by  home  authority.  With  a 
view  to  this  and  in  fulfilment  of  the  king's  designs  upon 
the  church,  the  archbishopric  of  Canterbury  was  given  to  1533 
Cranmer,  a  good  man,  but  pliant,  now  called  to  be  the 
theologian  and  liturgist  of  the  Anglican  Reformation. 
Cranmer  had  suggested  the  reference  to  the  universities. 
He  was  privately  married  against  the  canon,  and  was  thus 
at  the  mercy  of  the  king,  who  could  at  any  time  have  un- 
frocked him  for  breach  of  vow.  He  did  his  master's  will. 

By  her  coy  and  patient  artifice  Anne  Boleyn  had 
won  the  crown.  She  wore  it  not  long.  She  bore  the 
king  a  daughter,  Elizabeth,  but  not  the  male  heir  on  1533 
whose  birth  his  heart  was  fixed  and  his  hopes  were  built. 
Henry  grew  weary  of  her,  bickered  with  her,  fell  in  love 
with  Jane  Seymour,  a  lady  of  the  court.  On  a  sudden 


324  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

1536  Anne  was  arrested  and  accused  of  treason  in  flirting  with 
three  gentlemen  of  the  court,  Norris,  Brereton,  and 
Weston,  and  with  Smeaton,  a  musician.  To  swell  and 
blacken  the  indictment  she  was  also  hideously  accused 
of  incest  with  her  brother,  Viscount  Rochford.  She  pro- 
tested her  innocence,  and  of  her  alleged  paramours  one 
only,  Smeaton,  confessed,  and  he  under  terror  of  the 
rack,  a  regular  though  illegal  engine  of  Tudor  tyranny. 
She  was  tried  by  a  court  of  subservient  peers,  over  which 
professionally  presided  the  villain  and  sycophant  Aud- 
ley.  As  high  steward  sat  her  uncle,  the  Duke  of  Nor- 
folk; from  that  den  of  tyranny  and  intrigue  natural 
affection  as  well  as  justice  had  fled.  Before  her  mock 

1536  trial  parliament  had  been  called,  in  anticipation  of  the 
verdict,  to  re-settle  the  succession.  After  her  conviction 
she  was  made  to  confess  to  Cranmer  in  secret  something 
which  had  been  an  impediment  to  her  marriage  with  the 
king,  that  her  marriage  might  be  declared  null  and  her 
child  excluded  from  the  succession.  What  she  confessed 
there  can  be  little  doubt  was  that  her  sister  had  been  the 
mistress  of  the  king.  If  the  marriage  was  null,  it  fol- 
lowed that  she  had  never  been  queen  consort,  and  could 
not  by  her  adultery  have  committed  treason;  but  law 
stood  in  the  way  of  the  despot  as  little  as  justice.  Anne 
Boleyii  probably  was  a  bad  woman.  Perhaps  she  had 
upon  her  head  the  blood  of  catholic  martyrs,  and  would 
have  had  that  of  Wolsey  had  he  not  been  rescued  by 
death.  But  she  was  Henry's  wife.  Her  head  had  been 
laid  upon  his  breast.  She  was  the  mother  of  his  child. 
Probably  she  was  the  only  woman  whom  he  had  really 
loved.  While  she  was  being  tried  for  her  life  he  shocked 
the  people  by  the  indecency  of  his  revels.  The  day  after 


xvi  HENRY    VIII  325 

her  execution  he  took  to  wife  Jane  Seymour,  on  whom  he   1536 
had  set  his  affections,  and  for  whose  sake,  partly  at  least, 
it  cannot  be  doubted,  Anne  was  murdered. 

Of  those  who  were  accused  with  Anne,  Smeaton  alone 
confessed.  But  the  others  failed  to  protest  their  inno- 
cence, and  this  is  a  feature  common  in  the  judicial  mur- 
ders of  the  reign.  It  rested  with  the  king  to  say  whether 
the  condemned  should  be  beheaded  or  suffer  the  death  of 
torture  prescribed  by  the  treason  law.  It  rested  with  the 
king  to  say  whether  the  wife  and  children  should  be 
deprived  of  bread.  But,  moreover,  the  despotism  spread 
a  pall  of  terror  beneath  which  all  hearts,  as  well  as 
heads,  bowed  to  the  decree  of  the  despot,  as  that  of  some 
superior  and  almost  superhuman  power.  History  can 
produce  a  parallel.  When  Philip  Mary,  tyrant  of  Milan, 
to  get  rid  of  his  wife,  Beatrice,  of  whom  he  was  tired, 
accused  her  of  an  intrigue  with  Michael  Orombelli, 
though  the  charge  was  undoubtedly  false  and  was  to  the 
last  denied  by  Beatrice,  Orombelli  repeated  on  the  scaf- 
fold the  confession  which  had  been  first  wrung  from  him 
by  the  rack. 

The  divorced  wife  had  put  an  end  to  the  fear  of  the  Em-  1536 
peror's  intervention  by  preceding  her  rival  to  the  tomb, 
not  without  suspicion  of  foul  play.  When  she  died  the 
king  gave  a  court  ball,  appeared  at  it  in  gay  attire,  and 
carried  the  little  princess  Elizabeth  round  the  circle 
in  triumph.  There  have  been  bloodier  tyrants  than 
Henry  VIII. ;  there  never  was  one  more  brutal.  There 
never  was  one  who  more  trampled  on  affection.  Those 
who  deem  affection  a  small  part  of  our  life  and  weal,  or 
of  our  civilization,  may  think  Henry  a  good  king. 

Henry  meantime  had  been  borne  forward  in  religious 


326  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

innovation.  He  had  now  found  a  new  vizier,  a  layman, 
not  a  cardinal,  and  one  ready  to  go  all  lengths.  Thomas 
Cromwell,  a  trusted  servant  of  Wolsey,  had  leapt  nimbly, 
and  not  without  grace,  from  the  foundering  barque  of  his 
maker's  fortunes  into  the  royal  ship,  of  which  he  presently 
grasped  the  helm.  Doubt  hangs  and  fable  has  gathered 
about  the  early  part  of  this  man's  career.  He  appears  to 
have  been  a  roving  adventurer,  afterwards  a  scrivener  and 
money  lender;  then  a  confidential  dependent  of  the  car- 
dinal, and  employed  in  the  suppression  of  monasteries  for 
the  cardinal's  foundation  at  Oxford,  which  gave  him  the 
first  taste  of  confiscation.  Cromwell  was  exceedingly 
able,  daring,  and  absolutely  without  scruple ;  the  English 
counterpart  of  William  of  Nogaret,  the  familiar  of  Philip 
the  Fair,  and  destined  to  a  work  not  unlike  the  outrage 
on  Pope  Boniface  and  the  destruction  of  the  Templars. 
His  gospel  was  Machiavelli.  Religious  conviction  he 
probably  had  none.  Of  conscience  he  was  wholly  devoid. 
But  he  saw  that,  in  the  king's  present  temper,  protest- 
antism, or  at  least  war  on  the  pope  and  clergy,  was  the 
•winning  game.  He  pricked  the  king  onward  and  opened 
to  him  a  vista  not  only  of  power,  but  of  immense  spoils. 

The  first  blow  was  struck  at  the  clergy.  They  were 
1531  all  pronounced  liable  to  the  penalties  of  Prsemunire  for 
having  submitted  to  Wolsey's  exercise  of  the  legatine 
power,  and  an  enormous  sum  of  blackmail  was  demanded 
of  them  as  the  price  of  their  pardon.  As  the  king  him- 
self had  not  only  sanctioned  Wolsey's  legateship,  but 
appeared  in  the  case  for  the  divorce  as  a  suitor  in  Wol- 
sey's legatine  court,  this  was  an  act  of  brigandage  made 
fouler  by  chicane.  The  clergy,  however,  succumbed  and 
the  blackmail  was  paid.  The  laity  had  been  formally 


xvi  HENRY   VIII  327 

included  in  the  Praemunire,  but  to  levy  the  blackmail  on 
them  would  have  been  unsafe. 

The  attack  was  presently  turned  against  the  pope.  His 
first-fruits  were  made  over  to  the  king.  His  Peter's  pence  1534 
were  stopped.  His  appellate  jurisdiction  was  swept  away, 
and  the  judgment  of  the  king's  courts,  ecclesiastical  as 
well  as  civil,  was  made  final.  The  absolute  appointment 
of  archbishops  and  bishops  was  vested  in  the  crown, 
though  under  the  form  of  a  compulsory  election  by  the 
chapter.  Advancing,  the  king  transferred  to  himself  the 
entire  papal  authority,  causing  himself  to  be  declared  by 
parliament  the  only  supreme  head  in  earth  of  the  church  1535 
of  England.  Convocation  bent,  assuredly  against  its 
conscience,  to  the  royal  will.  Cromwell,  a  layman, 
was  made  vicar  general  and  presided  in  convocation  1535 
for  the  king,  while  the  legislative  power  of  that  assem- 
bly was  brought  absolutely  under  royal  control.  Thus 
an  estate  of  the  realm  which  had  hitherto  been  in 
some  measure  independent,  having  a  European  centre 
beyond  the  royal  power,  and  had  formed  an  important 
factor  in  the  conflict  of  forces  by  which  the  constitution 
was  wrought  out,  lost  its  independence,  and  became  a 
momentous  addition  to  the  force  of  the  crown,  the  politi- 
cal fortunes  of  which  it  henceforth  shares.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  English  monarchy  had  severed  itself  from  the 
catholic  monarchies,  and  from  the  common  cause  of  kings. 
Alone  it  will  have  to  face  the  spirit  of  innovation  which 
it  has  evoked,  and  which  will  presently  turn  to  political 
revolution. 

The  king  had  now  grasped  dominion  over  the  spiritual 
as  well  as  the  political  and  social  life  of  the  nation,  and 
in  the  spiritual  sphere  his  power  was  untempered  even 


328  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

by  a  packed  assembly,  since  convocation  had  become  a 
mere  organ  of  the  crown.  He  presently  exercised  his 
papal  power  by  giving  his  subjects  a  religion  under  the 

1537  title  of  "The  Institution  of  a  Christian  Man."  It  was 
substantially  the  old  religion  with  the  king  substituted 
for  the  pope.  In  putting  it  forth  the  king  proclaimed 
himself  responsible  for  the  souls  as  well  as  the  bodies  of 
his  subjects.  It  is  to  the  king,  he  says,  that  scripture 
gives  all  power  of  determining  causes,  of  correcting  errors, 
heresies,  and  sins.  That  the  nation  could  tamely  allow 
such  a  man  to  put  himself  practically  in  place  of  God 
shows  that  the  monarchy  must  have  been  strong,  and  that 
hatred  of  the  papacy  must  have  been  deep. 

But  there  were  catholic  consciences  in  England.  Sir 
Thomas  More,  whose  character  as  a  man,  as  a  judge,  and 
as  a  Christian  shines  like  a  star  in  the  night  of  iniquity, 
was  a  humanist  and  a  reformer  of  the  intellectual  school. 

1616  When  he  wrote  his  "Utopia"  he  was  a  thorough-going 
liberal.  But  he  grew  devout;  the  excesses  of  religious 
innovation  made  him  conservative ;  he  wrote  vehemently 
against  heresy.  In  office  he  treated  it  as  a  crime,  as.  by 
law  and  universal  opinion  it  then  was.  He  had  to  plead 
guilty  to  some  acts  of  personal  severity  against  heretics. 
That  he  put  heretics  to  death  is  untrue.  Erasmus  posi- 
tively denied  it  in  the  face  of  Europe.  Nor  was  per- 
secution More's  crime  in  the  eyes  of  the  despot,  who 
was  always  burning  heretics,  while  he  treated  as  heretics 
all  who  refused  to  bow  their  consciences  to  his  will. 
More  had  been  a  familiar  friend  of  the  king  and  had 
helped  him  in  the  composition  of  his  treatise  against 
Luther.  He  had  warned  the  king  against  excessive 
exaltation  of  the  pope's  authority,  and  the  king  had 


xvi  HENRY    VIII  329 

replied  that  he  could  not  say  too  much  in  favour  of  the 
authority  to  which  he  owed  his  crown.  He  understood 
Henry's  character,  and  to  one  who  congratulated  him  on 
the  signs  of  the  royal  favour  he  said  that  the  king  was 
kind  to  him,  but  that  if  his  head  could  buy  a  castle  in 
France  it  would  go.  On  Wolsey's  fall  he  became  chan-  152S) 
cellor.  Upon  the  breach  with  the  papacy  he  resigned. 
He  did  no  seditious  act;  he  spoke  no  disloyal  word;  but 
he  declined  to  swear  against  his  conscience  to  the  Act  of 
Succession,  framed,  in  defiance  of  the  papal  authority, 
to  legitimize  the  marriage  with  Anne  and  make  her 
descendants  heirs  to  the  crown,  or  to  the  Act  of  Suprem- 
acy making  an  earthly  despot  head  of  the  church.  It 
was  the  special  infamy  of  these  statutes  that  they  vio- 
lated the  sanctuary  of  conscience,  and  required  not  only 
submission  but  an  oath  of  assent.  A  base  attempt  was 
made  to  entrap  More  into  a  treasonable  avowal  through 
Rich,  solicitor-general,  a  miscreant  conspicuous  even  in 
that  age.  He  was  attainted  and  murdered.  With  him  1535 
for  the  same  cause  died  Bishop  Fisher,  the  best  of  the  1535 
catholic  prelates.  The  real  crime  of  both  was  that,  with 
their  high  reputation,  their  rectitude  smote  the  conscience 
of  the  king  and  probably  that  of  his  paramour.  Indigna- 
tion filled  the  catholic  world,  and  found  eloquent  expres- 
sion by  the  pen  of  Erasmus.  It  extended  even  to  the 
Lutherans,  who  had  looked  up  to  More,  catholic  though 
he  was,  as  a  reviver  of  learning  and  of  light.  In  vain 
the  government  put  forth  in  its  defence  a  lying  mani- 
festo. The  sophisms  by  which  these  murders  have  been 
defended  may  be  passed  over  with  scorn.  Words  are  not 
treason;  much  less  is  silence,  the  only  crime  of  Fisher 
and  More.  That  England  was  then  threatened  with  in- 


830  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

vasion  by  catholic  Europe  is  a  figment.  Nor  if  she  had 
been,  would  her  government  have  been  rendered  safer  by 
acts  which  filled  with  horror  not  only  the  catholic  world 
abroad  but  the  great  majority  of  her  own  people.  That 
More  and  Fisher  would  have  been  led  by  their  principles 
to  join  an  invading  army  is  a  suggestion  too  ridiculous 
for  discussion.  If  the  object  in  these  proceedings  was  the 
reform  of  religion,  could  the  religion  of  Jesus  Christ  be 
restored  by  shedding  innocent  blood?  O  Liberty,  what 
things  have  been  done  in  thy  name!  O  Jesus,  what 
things  have  been  done  in  Thine  I  The  plea  of  inevitable 
necessity  is  pathetically  put  forward  by  a  paradoxi- 
cal defender  of  these  executions.  Why  was  a  train  of 
judicial  murders  indispensable  to  the  Reformation  in  Eng- 
land any  more  than  in  Germany,  Holland,  or  Switzerland  ? 

Partners  with  More  and  Fisher  in  martyrdom,  not  to 
the  catholic  faith  alone,  but  to  spiritual  liberty  and 
truth,  were  the  monks  of  the  Charter  House,  in  whose 
heroism  the  religion  of  the  middle  ages  shot  a  departing 
ray.  Refusing,  as  not  only  every  catholic  but  every 
protestant  worthy  of  the  name  would  now  refuse  to  take, 
the  tyrant's  tests,  they  were  iniquitously  and  cruelly 
butchered.  Of  some  of  them  who  are  in  prison  one  of 
Cromwell's  minions  writes  to  his  master  "that  they  be 
almost  despatched  by  the  hand  of  God";  that  is,  they 
had  been  nearly  killed  by  being  kept  chained  upright  to 
posts,  or  by  the  filth  and  stench  of  their  dungeons. 

The  schism,  and  the  murder  of  Fisher  and  More,  stung 
to  frenzy  Reginald  Pole,  a  kinsman  of  the  king  and  one 
of  the  most  distinguished  ecclesiastics  of  the  day.  Pole 
was  a  member  of  the  liberal  circle  of  Contarini,  which 
sought  reconciliation  with  the  protestants  on  favourable 


xvi  HENRY    VIII  331 

terms,  including  the  recognition  of  justification  by  faith 
as  a  cardinal  doctrine.     But  like  other  men  of  his  time 
he  believed  in  the  necessity  of  church  unity,  and  could 
ill  brook  its  disruption  by  a  despot's  lust.     He  wrote  a 
violent  treatise  in  defence  of  church  unity  and  against   1635 
royal   usurpation.     lie   most   unwisely  tried  to  stir  the 
catholic  powers  to  a  crusade,  but  found  that  the  politi- 
cians were  cool-headed  and  that  the  age  of  crusades  was 
past.     Nor  was  it  ever  possible  to  allay  the  mutual  jeal- 
ousies of  the  two  great  rivals,  the  Emperor  Charles  V.  and 
Francis  I.  of  France,  so  far  as  to  get  them  to  draw  their 
swords  in  the  same  cause.     The  only  result  was  the  exe- 
cution, after  a  mock  trial  for  treason,  of  Pole's  mother,    1538 
the  Countess  of  Salisbury,  and  of  his  brother,  Lord  Mon-   1641 
tague,  with  others  of  his  friends. 

To  govern  without  parliament  had  been  Wolsey's  aim. 
Once  only,  pressed  by  financial  need,  he  had  called  a 
parliament,  and  with  that  parliament  he  had  quarrelled. 
To  govern  with  a  packed  parliament  seems  to  have  been 
the  policy  of  his  successor.  The  king  in  his  conflict  with 
the  pope  and  with  the  body  of  European  sentiment  on  the 
side  of  the  pope,  required  the  apparent  support  of  the 
nation,  which  a  packed  parliament  could  ostensibly  afford. 

Cromwell  now  offered  his  master,  whom  extravagance 
kept  needy,  a  flood  of  wealth  to  be  drawn  from  the  con- 
fiscation of  monastic  estates.  The  end  of  monasticism 
in  England  had  come.  Asceticism,  a  false  aspiration, 
though  useful  in  its  day  as  a  protest  against  barbarian 
sensuality,  had  by  this  time  decisively  failed.  It  had 
degenerated  into  torpor,  or  something  worse  than  torpor, 
with  a  prayer-mill.  Rules  had  been  relaxed.  In  the 
lesser  monasteries  especially  corruption  had  frequently 


332  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

set  in.  Monastic  life  having  become  a  life  of  drones,  the 
lazy  were  sure  to  take  to  it,  and  laziness  was  pretty  sure 
to  breed  vice.  Monasteries  in  parts  of  the  country  where 
there  were  no  inns  were  still  useful  as  hospices.  They 
fed  the  poor  at  their  gates,  fostering  mendicancy,  how- 
ever, by  their  almsgiving.  As  havens  of  learning  and 
places  of  education  they  had  been  largely  superseded  by 
universities,  grammar  schools,  and  libraries.  Printing 
had  put  an  end  to  the  use  of  their  writing-rooms  for  copy- 
ing books.  Instead  of  being  in  a  narrow  way  pioneers  of 
intellectual  progress  they  had  become  a  bar  to  it.  Of  all 
that  was  reactionary  and  obscurantist  in  the  church  they 
were  the  strongholds,  and  some  of  them  subsisted  by  the 
grossest  impostures  of  superstition.  To  parochial  reli- 
gion they  were  noxious  as  appropriators  of  parish  tithes. 
Easy  landlords  they  probably  were,  but  not,  as  in  the 
early  Cistercian  days,  agricultural  improvers.  The  estates 
of  some  of  them,  it  seems,  had  been  mismanaged  to  the 
extent  of  dilapidation.  They  had,  in  short,  generally 
become  an  incubus  on  the  community.  Not  all  were 
corrupt,  or  even  useless.  The  brightest  exceptions  were 
some  of  the  nunneries,  which,  as  places  of  education  for 
women,  had  still  a  work  to  do.  Already  there  had  been 
partial  dissolutions ;  for  when  the  crusading  spirit  passed 
away  the  order  of  the  Temple  was  abolished,  alien 
priories  had  afterwards  been  made  over  to  the  crown,  and 
Wolsey  had  dissolved  a  number  of  small  monasteries  to 
form  an  endowment  for  his  college  at  Oxford.  Parlia- 
ments more  than  once  had  cast  a  covetous  eye  on  the  vast 
estates  which,  they  said,  did  no  service  to  the  com- 
monwealth. Cromwell  now,  in  the  name  of  the  king, 
1535  sent  forth  commissioners  of  inquiry.  These  commis- 


xvi  HENRY   VIII  333 

sioners  no  doubt  were  tools.  They  found,  what  they 
were  sent  to  find,  reasons  for  a  sweeping  confiscation. 
Sometimes  their  report  preceded  inquiry.  But  there  is 
no  reason  to  doubt  that  they  found  facts  enough  for  their 
purpose  in  the  abodes  of  idleness,  dulness,  and  routine 
religion.  From  most  of  the  abbots  and  priors  surrenders 
were  obtained,  manifestly  against  law,  since  the  tenant 
for  life  could  not  alienate  or  forfeit  the  property  of  the 
corporation.  But  three  of  the  abbots,  refusing  to  sur- 
render, were  falsely  attainted  of  treason  and  put  to  death. 
Cromwell  sets  down  memoranda  for  disposing  of  them 
in  his  notebook;  "Item,  The  Abbot  of  Reading  to  be 
sent  down  to  be  tried  and  executed  at  Reading  with  his 
complices.  Item,  The  Abbot  of  Glaston  to  be  tried  at 
Glaston,  and  also  to  be  executed  there  with  his  com- 
plices. Item,  To  see  that  the  evidence  be  well  sorted  and 
the  indictments  well  drawn  against  the  said  abbots  and 
their  complices.  Item,  To  remember  specially  the  Lady 
of  Sar  (Salisbury).  Item,  What  the  King  will  have  done 
with  the  Lady  of  Sarum.  Item,  To  send  Gendon  to  the 
Tower  to  be  racked.  Item,  To  appoint  preachers  to  go 
throughout  this  realm  to  preach  the  gospel  and  true  word 
of  God."  The  restoration  of  pure  Christianity  by  such 
religious  reformers  as  Henry  VIII.  and  Thomas  Cromwell 
is  painted  in  these  words. 

We  have  recently  seen  a  dissolution  of  the  monasteries  18GO 
in  Italy.  The  Italian  monks  proved  content,  most  of 
them,  to  go  back  to  domestic  life.  To  the  English 
monks  small  pensions  were  assigned.  The  houses  were 
unroofed,  left  to  decay,  or  used  as  quarries.  Their  hoary 
ruins  touch  us  more  than  their  demolition  seems  to  have 
touched  the  generation  which  saw  their  fall.  Treasures 


334  THE  UNITED  KINGDOM  CHAP. 

of  medieval  art,  illuminated  missals  and  books,  church 
plate  and  vestments,  the  thought  of  which  fills  the  vir- 
tuoso with  anguish,  were  destroyed.  Less  to  be  mourned 
were  the  shrines  of  apocryphal  saints,  the  false  relics, 
the  winking  crucifixes,  the  wonder-working  images,  and 
other  stage  properties  of  a  fraudulent  superstition,  Eng- 
lish counterparts  of  the  Holy  Coat  of  Treves,  Pilate's 
Stairs,  and  the  House  of  Loretto.  Thomas  Becket  was 
cast  out  of  his  sumptuous  shrine,  the  treasures  of  which 
went  to  the  king's  coffers,  while  the  martyr  of  church 
privilege  was  proclaimed  a  traitor  who  had  been  killed 
in  a  brawl.  Among  the  populace  this  carnival  of  icono- 
clasm  took  the  shape  of  blasphemies  and  profanation  of 
the  Host  which  were  sure  to  provoke  catholic  reaction. 

The  dissolution  of  the  monasteries  removing  the  mitred 
abbots  from  the  House  of  Lords,  reduced  the  number  of 
ecclesiastical  members  from  forty-nine  to  twenty-six,  and 
turned  the  balance  in  favour  of  the  lay  element,  which 
had  been  in  a  minority  before. 

Of  the  fund  obtained  by  the  dissolution  of  the  monas- 
teries, some  was  spent  in  national  defences,  a  small  part 
in  the  foundation  of  new  bishoprics.  Far  the  greater  part 
became  the  prey  of  the  king  and  his  minions.  The  vast 
estates  of  noble  houses  remain  monuments  of  the  confis- 
cation, and  they  bound  those  houses  to  the  cause  of 
protestantism  and  a  protestant  government  so  long  as  the 
conflict  lasted.  This  is  the  origin,  and  hence  were 
derived  the  politics,  of  the  houses  of  Russell,  Cavendish, 
Seymour,  Grey,  Dudley,  Sidney,  Cecil,  Herbert,  Fitz- 
william,  Rich,  which  replaced  the  feudal  baronage  of  the 
middle  ages,  linked  to  protestantism  and  constitutional- 
ism by  their  possession  of  the  church  lands.  The  effect 


xvi  HENRY    VIII  335 

was  felt  as  late  as  the  Stuart  rising  in  1745.  Flushed 
with  rapine,  the  spoilers  spared  nothing  which  could  be 
called  monastic.  Augustinian  and  Benedictine  colleges 
at  Oxford  were  sequestrated.  The  tithes,  which  had 
been  appropriated  by  the  monasteries,  were  not  restored 
to  the  parishes  but  embezzled  by  the  spoilers,  and  as  the 
property  of  lay  impropriators  remain  a  scandal  to  this 
hour.  That  no  public  use  could  have  been  found  for  the 
funds  it  seems  difficult  to  maintain.  Education  called 
for  endowment;  public  works  of  many  kinds,  such  as 
roads  and  bridges,  were  much  needed;  so  were  hospitals, 
for  lack  of  which  in  time  of  plague  the  people  died  like 
flies.  At  any  rate,  the  taxpayer  might  have  been  re- 
lieved, and  government  might  have  been  spared  recourse 
to  fraud  and  extortion.  The  king  had  scarcely  gathered 
the  wealth  of  the  monasteries  into  his  coffers  when  he 
resorted  to  the  extortion  of  benevolences  and  the  debas.e-  1545 
ment  of  the  coin.  Rapacity,  though  gorged  with  the 
plunder  of  the  monasteries,  was  not  satisfied;  the  endow- 
ments of  the  universities,  of  the  chantries,  of  the  guilds, 
were  at  last  placed  in  the  king's  clutches  and  were  for 
the  moment  saved  by  his  death. 

Rapine  was  not  statesmanship,  nor  did  it  walk  in 
statesmanlike  ways.  The  hour  of  the  monasteries  had 
come,  but  dissolution  might  have  been  gradual.  It 
might  have  respected  local  circumstance  and  feeling.  In 
the  wild  and  ill-peopled  north  monasteries  were  still 
useful  as  hospices,  as  almshouses,  as  dispensaries,  as 
record  offices,  as  schools,  perhaps  in  a  rough  way  as  cen- 
tres of  civilization.  Their  faith  was  still  that  of  the 
people;  their  prayers  and  masses  for  the  dead  were  still 
prized.  Their  destruction  and  the  religious  innovations 


336  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

of  the  government  brought  on  a  dangerous  insurrection 
1536  in  the  north,  called  the  Pilgrimage  of  Grace,  in  the  sup- 
pression of  which  the  government  showed  its  perfidy  as 
well  as  its  savage  recklessness  of  blood. 

If,  as  is  reckoned,  the  number  of  monks  and  nuns 
turned  adrift  first  and  last  was  not  less  than  eight  thou- 
sand, and  ten  times  that  number  of  dependents  were 
turned  adrift  at  the  same  time,  great  must  have  been  the 
distress.  This,  with  the  disbanding  of  soldiers  hired  for 
the  wars  with  France  and  the  discharge  of  labourers  from 
farms  turned  into  sheep-walks,  may  account  for  the 
prevalence  of  vagabondage,  the  bloody  vagrancy  laws,  and 
the  fearful  activity  of  the  gallows. 

Henry  wished  to  encourage  trade,  respecting  the  inter- 
ests of  which  he  was  not  without  light.  But  whatever 
good  he  did  by  relaxation  of  the  usury  law  or  by  his 
bankruptcy  law  must  have  been  more  than  countervailed 
by  the  debasement  of  the  currency.  The  shilling  in  1551 
contained  less  than  one-seventh  of  the  amount  of  fine  silver 
in  the  shilling  of  1527,  while  the  discoveries  of  silver  in 
Mexico  and  Peru  by  the  Spaniards  lowered  the  value 
of  that  metal,  so  that  a  very  great  rise  in  prices  must 
have  ensued.  The  result  cannot  have  failed  to  be  ruin- 
ous to  industry  and  trade.  That  after  forced  loans,  the 
exactions  of  enormous  fines  from  the  clergy,  great  for- 
feitures, and  the  confiscation  of  the  monastic  estates,  the 
king  should  have  been  driven  to  resort  to  debasement  of 
the  coin,  shows  that  his  waste  in  palace-building,  gam- 
bling, and  court  pageantry  must  have  been  enormous.  It 
can  hardly  be  doubted  that  his  rule  was,  on  the  whole, 
materially  as  well  as  morally,  a  curse  to  the  nation. 

Theological  history  belongs  to  the  theologian.    Through 


xvi  HENRY    VIII  337 

the  rest  of  the  reign  there  runs  a  wavering  conflict  in  the 
king's  councils  between  the  party  of  the  new  men,  such  as 
Cromwell  and  Cranmer,  which  presses  religious  change, 
and  that  of  the  old  nobles,  headed  by  Norfolk,  a  veteran 
of  Flodden,  which,  as  much  from  political  as  religious 
motives,  clings  to  the  ancient  faith;  while  some,  like  Bishop 
Gardiner,  are  in  favour  of  a  national  church  and  inde- 
pendence of  Rome,  but  against  doctrinal  innovation.  The 
king  aimed  at  trimming  the  ship.  Perhaps  his  average 
policy,  that  of  secularization  and  national  independence 
without  much  change  of  doctrine  or  ritual,  coincided  with 
the  average  tendency  of  the  nation.  Into  the  spoliation 
of  the  monasteries  he  goes  with  all  his  heart,  as  he  does 
also  into  everything  which  extends  his  despotism  over  the 
church.  Under  the  influence  of  Cromwell  and  Cranmer 
he  for  a  time  appears  to  lean  to  protestantism,  and  gives 
the  reins  to  innovation,  though  he  shrinks  from  alliance 
with  the  thorough-going  protestantism  of  the  Germans. 
He  puts  forth  trimming  manuals  and  injunctions.  He 
allows  the  people  to  read  the  Bible  in  English,  though  he 
afterwards  restricts  the  permission.  Presently,  being  not 
so  much  under  the  influence  of  Cromwell,  alarmed  perhaps 
by  catholic  insurrection  in  the  north,  and  governed  by  the 
party  of  Norfolk  and  the  old  nobles,  he  veers  round  and 
makes  his  parliament  pass  the  act  for  abolishing  diversity  1539 
of  opinion,  usually  called  the  Six  Articles,  re-enacting  the 
cardinal  doctrines  and  rules  of  Roman  Catholicism;  tran- 
substantiation,  communion  in  one  kind,  the  celibacy  of 
the  priesthood,  the  obligation  of  vows  of  chastity,  private 
Masses,  and  auricular  confession.  Whoever  denied  the 
first  article  was  to  be  burned  as  a  heretic;  breach  of  any 
one  of  the  rest  entailed,  for  the  first  offence,  forfeiture  of 

VOL.  i  —  22 


338  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAI-. 

property,  for  the  second,  death.  All  marriages  of  priests 
were  declared  void  ;  continuance  in  them  was  made  a 
felony;  so  that  Archbishop  Cranmer,  if  he  kept  his  wife, 
would  be  a  felon.  It  was  felony  to  refuse  to  go  to  con- 
fession, felony  to  refuse  to  receive  the  sacrament.  Latimer 
and  Shaxton,  protestant  bishops,  were  driven  from  their 
sees.  A  score  of  people  suffered  under  this  act.  The 
via  media  was  kept  by  sending  catholics  and  protestants 
together  to  the  stake.  To  display  his  learning  Henry 
himself  holds  a  public  disputation  with  Lambert,  a  poor 
sectary,  in  defence  of  transubstantiation,  and  failing  to 
convince  him,  shows  his  own  chivalry  by  sending  his 
hapless  antagonist  to  Smithfield. 

The  king's  policy  was  swayed  by  his  matrimonial  advent- 
ures. Jane  Seymour  having  died  after  bearing  him  one 
son,  Cromwell,  anxious  for  a  protestant  alliance,  persuaded 

1540  him  to  give  his  hand  to  Anne  of  Cleves,  assuring  him  that 
she  was  a  beauty.  She  proved  to  be  "a  Flemish  mare." 
There  was  a  meeting  like  that  of  George  IV.  with  Caro- 
line of  Brunswick  in  after  days,  and  convocation,  now 
reduced  to  complete  subservience,  was  ordered  to  declare 

1640  the  marriage  void  on  pretences  too  thin  to  be  dignified 
with  the  name  of  deceit.  Cromwell  had  overreached  him- 
self, and  he  found  what  it  was  to  play  with  a  tiger.  He 
had  also  gone  beyond  the  mark  in  religious  change.  His 
enemies,  the  old  nobility  and  party  of  reaction,  pounced  on 
their  advantage.  He  fell  from  favour,  and  for  a  slave  of 
Henry  to  fall  from  favour  was  death.  Steeped  in  innocent 

1540  blood  as  well  as  in  robbery,  Cromwell  died  by  the  knife 
which  he  had  whetted  for  the  throats  of  others.  To  annul 
the  last  safeguard  of  liberty  he  had  obtained  from  the 
judges  an  opinion  that  an  Act  of  Attainder  would  hold 


xvi  HENRY    V11I  339 

good  though  the  accused  had  not  been  heard.  Under 
such  an  Act  of  Attainder  unheard  he  died,  putting  up 
abject  prayers  for  mercy  to  one  who  knew  not  what  it 
meant,  and  who,  when  the  slave  had  done  his  work,  slew 
him  as  he  would  have  slain  a  dog.  Like  a  dog  Thomas 
Cromwell  deserved  to  be  slain.  Even  in  the  height  of  his 
power  the  low-born  minister  had  been  treated  like  a 
menial,  his  master  "  beknaving  him  once  or  twice  a  week, 
and  sometimes  knocking  him  about  the  pate." 

One  service  the  king  had  done  the  revolution  which 
none  of  his  waverings  or  backslidings  could  cancel.  He 
had  authorized  an  English  translation  of  the  Bible  and  1536 
had  put  it,  though  grudgingly,  into  the  hands  of  the 
people.  The  Bible  was  an  authority  superior  to  that  of 
the  priesthood  to  which  any  layman  could  appeal,  and 
which  the  priest  could  not  dispute,  though,  as  he  well 
knew,  it  was  subversive  of  his  system  and  ruinous  to  his 
profession.  The  birthday  of  protestantism  is  the  day 
which  put  the  scriptures  into  the  hands  of  the  laity.  The 
Bible  in  English  is  the  sheet  anchor  by  which  the  Reforma- 
tion will  henceforth  ride  out  all  reactionary  storms. 

The  fifth  wife,  Catherine  Howard,  had  no  doubt  been 
guilty  of  incontinence.  The  husband  who  sent  her  to  the 
scaffold  was  not  pure.  Her  history,  like  all  these  matri- 
monial tragedies,  reveals  the  foulness  of  the  court.  The 
sixth  wife,  Catherine  Parr,  kept  her  head  upon  her  shoul- 
ders. According  to  a  current  story  she  was  near  losing 
it  by  heresy,  but  by  adroitly  playing  on  the  king's  vanity 
she  escaped. 

Swollen  and  soured  by  disease,  the  king  grew  more 
jealous,  suspicious,  and  bloodthirsty  as  he  approached  his 
end.  His  fear  was  for  the  succession  of  his  infant  son, 


340  THE   UNITED  KINGDOM  CHAP. 

and  he  was  under  the  influence  of  the  Seymours,  his  son's 
uncles,  and  the  new  men.     Lord  Dacre  of  the  South  was 

1541  put  to  death,  nominally  for  the  killing  of  a  gamekeeper, 
not  by  Dacre  himself  but  by  one  of  his  party,  in  a  poach- 
ing affray;  really  to  destroy  a  powerful  noble  and  seize 
his  lands.  At  last  the  king's  suspicion  fell  on  the  Duke 
of  Norfolk  and  his  brilliant  son,  the  soldier  and  poet  Earl 

1547  of  Surrey.  Both  were  attainted  for  treason.  Norfolk 
was  saved  by  the  king's  death;  Surrey  was  murdered. 
The  chief  proof  of  his  treason  was  his  assuming  the  arms 
of  Edward  the  Confessor  in  a  wrong  quarter  of  his  shield. 
His  sister  came  forward  as  a  witness  against  him  to  prove 
that  he  had  bade  her,  probably  in  jest,  gain  influence  at 
court  by  flirting,  like  Anne  Boleyn,  with  the  king.  Nor- 
folk also  spoke  against  his  son.  The  outrages  on  natural 
affection  with  which  this  history  abounds  are  not  less 
hideous  than  the  perfidies  and  murders. 

The  will  of  king  Henry  VIII.  instantly  requires  and 
desires  Christ's  Mother,  the  blessed  Virgin  Mary,  with  all 
the  holy  company  of  heaven  continually  to  pray  for  him, 
and  provides  an  altar  at  which  daily  masses  shall  be  said 
for  him  perpetually  while  the  world  shall  endure.  A  pro- 
testant  or  a  religious  reformer  he  never  was;  nor  had 
protestantism  or  the  Reformation  anything  to  do  with  his 
crimes. 

The  upshot  of  his  ecclesiastical  policy  was  a  state 
church,  severed  from  the  papacy  and  from  the  rest  of 
Christendom,  with  the  king  for  its  pope,  legislating  for 
it  partly  under  cover  of  an  enslaved  convocation,  nominat- 
ing its  episcopate  under  cover  of  a  congS  d'glire,  acting  as 
supreme  judge  over  all  its  causes  and  all  its  persons,  regu- 
lating its  creed,  its  ritual,  and  its  discipline.  The  creed 


xvi  HENRY   VIII  341 

and  ritual  as  finally  regulated  by  Henry  were  catholic. 
But  by  renouncing  the  head  of  the  catholic  church,  by 
destroying  the  monasteries,  by  wrecking  shrines  and 
images,  by  abolishing  pilgrimages,  by  giving  the  people 
the  Bible  though  in  stinted  measure,  by  stripping  the 
priestly  order  of  its  immunities  and  humbling  it  to 
the  dust,  the  flood-gate  had  been  opened  through  which  the 
tide  of  protestantism  was  sure  to  pour.  Thus  Henry  was 
a  protestant  in  spite  of  himself.  Still  the  English  Refor- 
mation under  him  was  monarchical  and  political.  The 
papal  power,  which,  in  countries  where  the  reformation 
was  made  by  the  people  or  the  aristocracy,  was  abolished, 
in  England  was  transferred  to  the  king.  In  the  following 
years,  the  king  being  a  minor  and  the  monarchy  in  abey- 
ance, a  revolution  of  doctrine  and  worship,  truly  called 
the  Reformation,  will  ensue. 


CHAPTER   XVII 

EDWARD  VI 
BORN  1537;  SUCCEEDED  1547;  DIED  1553 

A  UTHORIZED  by  a  servile  parliament,  Henry  VIII. 
had  presumed  to  treat  the  kingdom  as  his  private 
estate,  to  dispose  of  it  by  will,  to  put  the  government 
into  the  hands  of  his  executors,  and  even  to  invalidate 
national  legislation,  as  a  testator  might  suspend  dealings 
with  the  estate,  during  the  minority  of  his  heir.  The  six- 
teen executors,  however,  presently  doffed  that  character, 
donned  the  ordinary  character  of  privy  councillors,  and 
1547  formed  a  regency,  governing  with  a  parliament  under  its 
control.  Henry  had  intended  to  balance,  in  the  compo- 
sition of  his  administrative  board,  the  two  parties,  the 
conservative  and  progressive,  or,  as  he  called  them,  the 
dull  and  rash,  against  each  other.  But  the  balance  was 
at  once  upset  in  favour  of  the  progressive  and  rash  party, 
which  threw  itself  into  the  doctrinal  revolution.  Again, 
as  during  the  minorities  of  Henry  III.,  Richard  II., 
Henry  VI.,  and  Edward  V.,  the  council  becomes  the 
government.  That  character  it  will  retain  under  the 
sovereign  when  he  is  regnant,  till  it  gives  place  to 
the  party  cabinet.  It  will  extend  its  authority  from  the 
state  to  the  church  and  will  seek  to  exercise  legislative 
and  judicial  as  well  as  executive  power. 

Henry  had  willed   that   the   executors   should   all   be 

342 


CHAP,  xvn  EDWARD    VI  343 

equal  in  authority,  but  a  head  was  needed  by  the 
government,  especially  in  its  foreign  relations.  With 
little  opposition  the  young  king's  uncle,  the  Earl  of 
Hertford,  shortly  created  Duke  of  Somerset,  made  him- 
self Protector,  under  a  nominal  engagement  not  to  act  1547 
without  consent  of  his  colleagues,  which  the  necessities 
of  administration,  concurring  with  his  own  ambition, 
speedily  set  aside.  That  Somerset  was  a  good  soldier 
his  brilliant  victory  over  the  Scotch  at  Pinkie  Cleugh  1547 
proved,  while  the  war  in  which  that  victory  was  gained 
showed  him  to  be  a  bad  statesman,  since  it  wrecked  the 
hope  of  a  marriage  between  the  young  king  and  Mary, 
the  heiress  of  Scotland,  and  threw  Scotland  once  more 
into  the  arms  of  France.  Nor  had  he  the  force  of  character 
to  curb  the  daring,  dark,  and  restless  spirits  trained  in  the 
rivalries  and  conspiracies  of  Henry's  court  and  council. 

Edward  VI.  was  a  boy  of  ten,  but  his  marvellous 
precocity,  both  of  conviction  and  of  intelligence,  made 
him  an  influence.  He  had  imbibed  a  passionate  love  of 
the  reformed  religion,  and  an  equally  passionate  hatred 
of  popery.  Had  he  lived  and  remained  unchanged,  the 
religious  revolution  would  probably  have  run  its  full 
course ;  his  early  death,  therefore,  is  one  of  the  critical 
events  of  history. 

The  executors  were  the  true  political  offspring  of  the 
last  reign.  Their  first  care  was,  under  pretence  of  ful- 
filling Henry's  oral  bequests,  to  vote  themselves  church 
plunder  and  higher  titles.  They  not  only  laid  their  1547 
hands  upon  the  chantries  in  which  Masses  were  said  for 
souls,  the  religious  funds  of  trade  guilds  and  everything 
which  retained  the  odour  of  a  catholic  foundation, 
but  upon  the  estates  of  the  bishoprics  and  cathedral 


344  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

chapters,  some  of  which  were  mercilessly  pillaged.  The 
Protector  led  the  rapine  and  built  for  himself  a  palace 
in  the  Strand,  destroying  churches  to  make  room  or  fur- 
nish materials  for  it.  Each  of  these  confiscations  bound 
the  new-born  aristocracy  more  closely  than  ever  to  the 
religious  revolution. 

The  religious  revolution  advanced.  It  was  guided  by 
Archbishop  Cranmer,  who  played  the  part  of  a  minister  of 
public  worship.  The  primate  had  by  this  time  pretty 
well  got  rid  of  the  remnants  of  Catholicism  which  long 
hung  about  him ;  above  all,  of  his  belief  in  transubstan- 
tiation,  the  keystone  of  the  catholic  faith  and  system. 
He  had  at  his  side  Latimer  and  Ridley,  the  first  a  rough 
English  Luther,  full  of  homely  force  and  valour,  though 
less  eminent  for  discretion ;  the  second  like  Melanch- 
thon,  a  learned  and  temperate,  yet  thoroughly  protestant 
divine.  Bishops  Gardiner  and  Bonner,  the  leaders  of  the 
reactionary  party,  refusing  or  evading  compliance  with 
the  policy  of  the  government,  presently  found  them- 

1547  selves  in  prison,  where  at  the  end  of  the  reign  both  of 
them  were.  Wriothesly,  a  catholic,  was  removed  from 
the  chancellorship.  To  give  protestantism  free  course, 

1647  the  Act  of  the  Six  Articles  was  repealed.  Royal  com- 
missions went  their  rounds  to  extirpate  all  relics  of 

1549  popery,  such  as  the  images  of  saints  and  their  effigies 
in  painted  windows ;  to  see  that  the  Bible  was  read, 
that  protestant  doctrine  was  taught,  that  clergymen 
preached  instead  of  performing  the  magic  rite  of  the 
Mass,  that  instead  of  the  festivals  of  the  saints  in  the 
Roman  calendar  the  Sabbath  was  observed.  The  traces  of 
such  commissions,  in  the  wreck  of  sculptures  and  painted 
glass,  lovers  of  church  art  still  view  with  sorrow. 


xvii  EDWARD   VI  345 

The  bishops  were  made  to  take  out  official  patents 
as  servants  of  the  crown,  holding  their  places  during  the 
king's  pleasure,  while  the  forms  of  episcopal  election  were 
abolished,  and  an  end  was  thus  made  of  any  claims  to 
independent  power  founded  on  apostolical  succession. 
Hooper,  when  appointed  to  a  bishopric,  refused  even  to 
be  consecrated  in  the  episcopal  vestments,  which  he 
deemed  rags  of  popery,  and  to  overcome  his  scruples 
strong  pressure  was  required. 

Henry  VIII.  had  shrunk  from  alliance  with  the  German 
protestants.  The  new  government  stretched  out  its  arms 
to  them,  treated  their  churches  as  in  full  communion  with 
that  of  England,  brought  over  two  of  their  divines,  1548 
Bucer  and  Peter  Martyr,  to  help  in  the  English  Refor- 
mation, and  took  the  advice  of  Calvin.  Calvin's  doctrine, 
not  only  respecting  the  eucharist,  but  respecting  the  gen- 
eral relation  of  man  to  God,  is  more  thoroughly  opposed 
even  than  that  of  Luther  to  belief  in  sacerdotal  mediation. 
It  became,  and  for  some  time  remained,  the  doctrine  of 
the  English  Reformation.  High  churchmen  still  shud- 
der at  the  name  of  the  Lambeth  Articles,  drawn  up  in  1595 
the  next  reign  but  one  by  an  episcopal  conclave  for 
adoption  by  the  church  and  embodying  Calvinism  in  its 
extreme  form. 

Cranmer  meanwhile  was  engaged  in  the  compilation  1549 
of  an  English  and  protestant  liturgy.  His  work  was 
largely  a  translation  of  the  Roman  offices,  yet  with  only 
so  much  of  the  old  doctrine  and  sentiment  left  as  might 
in  some  degree  temper  change  to  the  catholic  soul.  His 
singular  command  of  liturgical  language  enabled  him  to 
invest  a  new  ritual  at  once  with  a  dignity  and  beauty 
which  gave  it  a  strong  hold  on  the  heart  of  the  wpr- 


346  THE  UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

shipper  and  have  made  it  the  mainstay  of  the  Anglican 
church.  Its  substantial  protestantism,  while,  out  of  ten- 
derness for  the  feelings  of  catholics,  it  retained  traces  of 
catholic  ritual,  was  more  marked  in  a  second  version  than 
1549  in  the  first.  An  Act  of  Uniformity  imposed  this  liturgy 
1551  on  the  national  church.  Articles  of  Religion,  thoroughly 
protestant,  so  that  the  Neo-catholicism  of  our  day  struggles 
with  their  adverse  import,  were  framed  as  the  manifesto 
of  the  Anglican  Reformation,  and  were  accompanied  by 
a  set  of  homilies,  in  which,  if  fasting  is  retained,  it  is 
founded  partly  on  the  expediency  of  encouraging  the  fish 
trade.  The  eucharist  became  a  commemoration.  The 
altar  became  a  communion  table.  Absolution,  instead 
of  an  act  of  the  priest,  became  a  declaration  of  the  mercy 
of  God.  Worship,  instead  of  sacrifice,  became  common 
prayer.  The  seven  sacraments  were  reduced  to  two. 
The  cup  was  given  to  the  laity.  The  chancel-rail,  which 
had  parted  the  priesthood  from  the  people,  was  morally 
removed.  The  clergy  were  re-united  with  the  laity  by 
permission  to  marry.  With  clerical  celibacy  departed 
monastic  vows.  Purgatory  was  discarded,  and  with  it 
prayers  for  the  dead.  The  mystical  Latin  gave  way,  as 
the  language  of  worship,  to  the  vulgar  tongue.  The  place 
of  the  Roman  calendar  with  its  saints-days  was  taken  by 
the  Calvinistic  Sabbath.  Crucifixes,  images  of  saints, 
pyxes,  chalices,  holy  water,  disappeared.  Pilgrimages 
ceased.  The  whole  catholic  and  medieval  system,  in  short, 
was  swept  away,  and  replaced  by  the  protestant  system  so 
far  as  law  could  do  it.  Law  could  not  reach  the  hearts 
of  the  people,  masses  of  whom  in  the  more  backward  parts 
of  the  kingdom,  though  they  might  be  willing  to  part  with 
papal  supremacy  and  more  than  willing  to  part  with  the 


XVH  EDWARD   VI  347 

courts  ecclesiastic,  clung  to  the  ancient  faith,  and  still 
more  to  the  ancient  forms.  The  shape  of  the  edifices,  too, 
adapted  for  Mass,  not  for  common  prayer  and  preaching, 
continued  to  protest  against  the  substitution  of  common 
prayer  and  preaching  for  the  Mass.  The  sudden  transi- 
tion could  not  fail  to  involve  wide-spread  disorder,  pro- 
fanity, and  confusion. 

All  this  was  done  by  the  government  without  deference 
to  convocation  and,  as  subsequent  events  show,  against 
the  wishes  of  the  great  body  of  the  clergy.  Deference 
was  paid  to  the  authority  of  leading  divines,  foreign  as 
well  as  English,  but  only  as  to  that  of  experts  and  by  way 
of  supporting  acts  of  government.  Convocation  hence- 
forth has  no  independent  power.  The  crown  and  par- 
liament are  now,  and  with  a  brief  and  doubtful  interlude 
will  remain,  the  supreme  legislature  of  the  church  as  well 
as  of  the  state.  What  was  afterwards  called  the  Erastian 
principle  is  practically  established  as  the  principle  of  the 
English  polity.  The  power  of  the  priest,  though  not  the 
political  influence  of  the  church,  receives  its  death-blow. 
The  church  of  England  becomes  in  fact  a  department  of 
the  state. 

Meanwhile  the  clergy,  having  refused  to  unite  with 
the  other  estates  in  parliament,  had,  on  account  of  their 
supposed  representation  in  their  own  assembly,  been 
practically  excluded  from  the  House  of  Commons.  The 
bishops  alone,  by  virtue  of  their  baronies,  retained  seats 
in  the  House  of  Lords,  where  since  the  abolition  of  the 
abbacies  they  had  become  a  weak  minority.  Thus  the 
clergy,  while  they  lost  their  power  as  priests,  forfeited 
part  of  their  privileges  as  citizens.  A  shadowy  relic  of 
priestly  immunity  from  secular  jurisdiction  and  at  the 


348  THE  UNITED  KINGDOM  CHAP. 

same  time  of  clerical  monopoly  of  learning,  benefit  of 
clergy,  lingered  with  relics  of  wager  of  battle  and  corn- 
purgation  down  to  the  present  century  in  English  law. 

To  complete  the  ecclesiastical  polity,  it  was  proposed 
to  frame  a  new  code  of  ecclesiastical  law,  substituting  a 
rational  and  protestant  discipline  for  the  Roman  peniten- 
tials,  and  regulating  in  the  same  sense  the  jurisdiction  of 
the  ecclesiastical  courts.  The  project  did  not  take  effect, 
but  of  the  spirit  in  which  it  was  framed  we  may  judge, 
since  we  know  that  it  would  have  treated  marriage  no 
longer  as  a  sacrament,  but  as  dissoluble,  and  would  have 
provided  for  divorce. 

The  Acts  against  the  Lollards  were  repealed.     So  far 

toleration  advanced.     But  heresy  was  still  a  crime  and 

Anabaptists  were  still  burned.     Their  rising  in  Germany 

1523-5  under  Munzer  had  branded  them  with  anarchy,  political 

1550  as  well  as  religious.  The  fate  of  Joan  Bocher  has  ex- 
cited peculiar  pity  and  has  cast  a  deep  shadow  on  the 
fame  of  Cranmer,  who,  however,  seems  to  have  been 
responsible  only  as  a  member  of  council  and  its  adviser 
in  ecclesiastical  affairs.  Protestantism,  the  religion  of 
private  judgment  and  an  open  Bible,  knew  not  yet  of 

1553  what  spirit  it  was.  Of  this  the  burning  of  Servetus  by 
Calvin  was  a  hideous  proof.  But  it  is  not  just  to  com- 
pare the  execution  of  Anabaptists  or  Jesuits,  few  in 
number  and  partly  on  political  grounds,  or  the  death 
of  Servetus,  to  the  fires  and  torture-houses  of  the  Inqui- 
sition. Protestantism  has  long  since  abjured  persecution 
and  deplored  the  burning  of  Servetus.  Romanism,  in 

1864  its  latest  utterance,  the  Encyclical,  re-asserts  the  funda- 
mental principle  of  persecution,  and  it  has  never  deplored 
or  renounced  the  acts  of  the  Inquisition, 


xvn  EDWARD   VI  349 

Out  of  the  spoils  of  the  church,  Christ's  Hospital  and  1553 
some  grammar  schools  were  founded  in  the  name  of  the 
young  king.  This  was  not  much,  but  it  showed  the 
spirit  of  the  movement.  Protestantism  has  generally 
forwarded,  Roman  Catholicism,  when  left  to  itself,  as  in 
Italy  and  Spain,  has  generally  discouraged  popular  educa- 
tion. The  open  Bible,  if  it  was  not  free  thought,  was  an 
appeal  to  reason.  A  day  when  the  religion  of  the  open 
Bible  would  conflict  with  free  thought  might  come;  but 
it  was  in  the  distant  future. 

By  the  progressive  inhabitants  of  the  towns  the  Refor- 
mation seems  to  have  been  generally  embraced,  or  at  all 
events  received  with  submission.  The  less  quick-witted 
country  folk  clove  to  the  celibate  priesthood,  to  the  magi- 
cal sacraments,  to  the  mystical  Latin  of  the  old  liturgy,  to 
the  intercession  of  the  saints,  to  the  comfortable  anodjme 
of  confession  and  ubsolution.  So,  under  the  Roman 
Empire,  while  the  cities  became  Christian,  the  country 
folk  clove  to  the  old  gods.  The  dull  flame  of  peasant 
disaffection,  we  may  be  sure,  would  be  fanned  by  the 
parish  priests,  who,  apart  from  the  shock  to  their  senti- 
ments, the  depression  of  their  order,  and  the  spoliation  of 
their  church,  would,  as  Mass-priests,  be  unsuited  to  the 
duties  of  a  pastor,  which,  under  the  new  system,  they 
were  called  upon  to  perform.  Among  the  simple  and 
ignorant  peasantry  of  the  west  of  England  there  broke 
out  a  rebellion  like  the  Pilgrimage  of  Grace.  Exeter,  1549 
which  held  out  for  the  government  and  the  Reformation, 
was  besieged  and  nearly  taken  by  a  peasant  army.  It 
was  with  difficulty  that  the  bankrupt  and  discredited 
government  raised  forces  to  cope  with  the  insurrection. 
The  day  was  turned  at  last  against  the  rustic  scythes 


350  THE  UNITED  KINGDOM  CHAP. 

and  pitchforks  by  the  arquebuses  of  German  and  Italian 
mercenaries  whom  the  government  was  fain  to  bring  into 
the  field,  and  by  whose  intervention  as  foreigners  in  a 
struggle  between  English  parties  its  popularity  was  not 
likely  to  be  increased.  The  victory  was  signalized  by  the 
hanging  of  priests  from  parish  steeples  with  mass-books 
round  their  necks. 

In  the  east  of  England,  where  the  people  were  not 
so  primitive,  there  was  little  religious  reaction,  but  the 
government  had  there  to  contend  with  a  dangerous  insur- 
rection arising  from  a  different  cause.  The  age  was  one 
of  economical  and  industrial  as  well  as  of  religious  revo- 
lution. Organization  was  giving  place  to  competition, 
as  the  principle  of  industrial  life.  In  the  cities  there 
seems  to  have  been  an  exodus  from  places  where  in- 
dustry was  shackled  by  the  rules  of  the  old  guilds 
and  their  oppressive  system  of  apprenticeships  to  places 
without  guilds  or  charters,  where  labour  and  trade 
were  free.  In  the  country  it  was  the  period  of  the 
final  transition  from  the  old  manorial  system  to  the 
modern  and  essentially  commercial  system  of  land-owner- 
ship with  hired  labour.  The  landlord  was  enclosing  the 
common,  by  pasturing  on  which  peasants  had  eked  out 
what  was  probably  a  poor  and  laborious  existence.  The 
small  holdings  were  being  thrown  together  into  large 
farms,  which  paid  better.  Sheep  farms  especially  were 
profitable,  from  the  great  demand  for  wool  and  the  small 
amount  of  labour  required.  The  displacement  of  the 
little  homestead  by  the  sheep-fold  is  the  great  subject  of 
complaint  at  this  time.  Latimer  bewails  the  destruction 
of  his  father's  homestead  and  its  old-fashioned  counter- 
parts. Efforts  were  made  to  protect  the  plough  by  legis- 


xvii  EDWARD   VI  351 

lation ;  they  were  evidently  ineffectual,  and  served  only 
to  sing  the  dirge  of  the  old  system  with  its  relations  and 
its  reciprocal  duties.  The  decay  of  husbandry  which  the 
legislature  deplored  might  be  a  change,  ultimately,  for 
the  better.  The  loss  of  population  might  be  only  a 
displacement.  The  transition  might  be  inevitable.  But 
transitions,  though  inevitable,  are  cruel,  and  there  could 
not  fail  to  arise  a  bitter  antagonism  between  the  evicting 
landlords  and  the  evicted  tenants.  The  land-owner  had 
not  yet  assumed,  in  place  of  his  duties  as  a  feudal  lord, 
his  duties  as  a  squire. 

"When  I  consider  and  weigh  in  my  mind  all  these 
commonwealths  which  nowadays  anywhere  do  flourish,  so 
God  help  me,  I  can  perceive  nothing  but  a  certain  con- 
spiracy of  rich  men  procuring  their  own  commodities 
under  the  name  and  title  of  the  commonwealth.  They 
invent  and  devise  all  means  and  crafts,  first  how  to  keep 
safely,  without  fear  of  losing,  that  they  have  unjustly 
gathered  together,  and  next  how  to  hire  and  abuse  the 
work  and  labour  of  the  poor  for  as  little  money  as  may 
be.  These  devices  when  the  rich  men  have  decreed  to 
be  kept  and  observed  under  colour  of  the  commonalty, 
that  is  to  say,  also  of  the  poor  people,  then  they  be  made 
laws."  So  wailed  More  in  his  Utopian  days,  with  Uto- 
pian exaggeration,  but  probably  not  without  basis  of 
fact.  These  ideas  were  working  then  as  they  are  now 
and  as  they  were  in  the  days  of  Wat  Tyler.  They  had 

assumed  a  terrible  form  in  the  outbreak  of  communism    Jfff" 

15oo 

and  anarchism  at  Munster  under  John  of  Leyden. 

In  Norfolk  the  peasantry  rose  under  Robert  Kett,  a   1549 
man  of  substance,  no  John  of  Leyden,  but  apparently  a 
well-meaning  and  humane  reformer.     They  made  them- 


352  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

selves  masters  of  Norwich,  where  they  found  sympathy, 
and  near  which  they  formed  a  great  camp,  with  Kett's 
insurrectionary  tribunal,  the  "  oak  of  justice,"  in  the 
midst  of  it.  Under  the  oak  of  justice  they  brought 
offending  landlords  to  trial.  They  broke  down  enclosures 
and  killed  the  deer  in  the  parks  of  the  gentry.  Yet  they 
committed  no  such  atrocities  as  had  been  committed  by 
the  insurgents  under  Wat  Tyler.  The  government,  after 
a  trial  of  their  strength,  was  sufficiently  impressed  with 
it  to  open  negotiations ;  but  mutual  mistrust  prevailed. 
The  end  was  a  pitched  battle  in  which  the  discipline  and 
arquebuses  of  the  foreign  mercenaries,  whom  the  govern- 
ment again  brought  into  the  field,  once  more  prevailed 
over  rustic  strategy  and  arms.  Executions  followed  of 
course,  and  Kett,  for  struggling  against  economical  des- 

1549  tiny,  swung  in  chains  from  the  castle  tower,  while  his 
brother  William  swung  from  the  steeple  of  his  parish. 
A  rigorous  law  against  riotous  assemblages  for  the  pur- 

1549  pose  of  breaking  enclosures  crowned  the  victory  of  the 
gentry  and  the  government. 

Incident  to  economical  transition  was  the  growth  of 
pauperism.  That  doleful  history  has  begun.  The  slave 
or  serf  in  destitution  or  old  age  may  look  to  his  master 
for  support ;  the  independent  labourer  must  shift  for 
himself,  and  when  first  turned  loose  he  might  be  almost 
as  little  capable  of  self-support  as  the  emancipated  slave. 
The  conversion  of  plough-land  into  sheep-walk  must  have 
cast  many  farm-hands  adrift ;  so  must  the  dissolution 
of  the  monasteries ;  so  must  the  reduction  of  the  feudal 
trains;  while  the  debasement  of  the  currency  by  dis- 
organizing industry  and  trade  would  be  sure  to  aggravate 
the  evil.  Tramps  multiplied  and  became  a  pest,  often, 


xvn  EDWARD   VI  353 

no  doubt,  adding  outrage  to  mendicity.  The  government 
swelled  their  number  by  disbanding  the  soldiers  whom 
it  had  hired  for  foreign  wars.  It  then  tried,  under 
Henry  VIII.  and  again  in  the  present  reign,  to  repress  1647 
vagabondage  by  savage  vagrancy  laws,  rising  in  their  1549 
cruelty  from  flogging  and  branding  to  slavery,  to  work- 
ing in  irons,  even  to  death,  while  thieves  were  sent  to 
the  gallows  twenty  in  a  batch.  "  They  be  cast  into 
prison,"  says  More  in  his  "  Utopia,"  "  as  vagabonds  be- 
cause they  go  about  and  work  not,  whom  nobody  will 
set  to  work,  though  they  never  so  willingly  proffer 
themselves  thereto."  The  Tudor  vagrancy  laws  hideously 
depict  the  attitude  of  the  rich  towards  the  poor  in  days 
glorified  by  some  as  those  of  healthier  relations  and  a 
higher  social  ideal. 

Honest  destitution  was,  at  the  same  time,  not  unrecog- 
nized. An  attempt  was  at  first  made  to  relieve  it  by 
means  of  a  system  of  voluntary  contributions  in  each 
parish.  But  voluntary  contribution,  however  enjoined 
by  the  government  and  preached  by  the  clergy,  was  an 
ineffectual  substitute  for  a  regular  poor  law. 

The  Protector  favoured  the  cause  of  the  poor.  He  is 
interesting  as  the  first  English  statesman  who  took  that 
line.  He  went  so  far  as  to  put  forth  a  manifesto  rebuk- 
ing the  gentry  for  their  covetous  encroachments  on  the 
peasants'  rights  and  recalling  them  to  their  social  duty. 
"To  plant  brotherly  love  among  us,  to  increase  love 
and  godly  charity  among  us,  and  make  us  know  and 
remember  that  we  all,  poor  and  rich,  noble  and  ignoble, 
gentlemen  and  husbandmen,  and  all  other  of  whatsoever 
estate  they  be,  be  members  of  one  body  mystical  of  our 
Saviour  Christ  and  of  the  body  of  the  realm,"  —  sucli  was 

VOL.   1  —  23 


354  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

the  social  policy  of  the  Protector,  as  set  forth  in  his  com- 
mission of  reform.  Whether  his  motive  was  genuine 
sympathy  with  the  peasantry,  personal  ambition,  or  a 
mixture  of  the  two,  we  cannot  say.  Sir  William  Paget, 
the  shrewdest  statesman  of  the  day,  in  a  letter  to  him 
complains  that  the  king's  subjects  were  "  out  of  all  dis- 
cipline, out  of  obedience,  caring  neither  for  Protector  nor 
king,  and  much  less  for  any  other  mean  officer."  "And 
what  is  the  cause  ?  Your  own  lenity,  your  softness,  your 
opinion  to  be  good  to  the  poor ;  the  opinion  of  such  as 
saith  to  your  Grace,  '  Oh !  Sir,  there  was  never  man  had 
the  hearts  of  the  poor  as  you  have.  Oh!  the  commons 
pray  for  you  sir,  they  say  "  God  save  your  life."  I  know 
your  gentle  heart  right  well,  and  that  your  meaning  is 
good  and  godly,  however  some  evil  men  list  to  prate 
here  that  you  have  some  greater  enterprise  in  your  head 
that  lean  so  much  to  the  multitude."  It  is  certain  that 
Somerset's  head  had  been  somewhat  turned  by  his  eleva- 
tion. He  had  addressed  the  king  of  France  as  "mj' 
brother."  Paget  complains  that  he  is  testy  and  will 
not  listen  to  advice.  In  vain  Paget,  like  one  bred  in  the 
school  of  strong  government,  conjured  him  to  call  out  his 
Almains  and  take  the  work  of  repression  into  his  own 
hands,  assuring  him  that  by  doing  so  he  would  lose  no 
popularity  that  was  worth  keeping.  Somerset  stood 
irresolute,  only  showing  his  sympathy  with  the  commons 
enough  to  incur  the  hatred  of  the  aristocracy  and  set 
them  conspiring  for  his  destruction. 

The  council  had  apparently  been  from  the  outset  little 
better  than  a  knot  of  viperine  ambitions.  The  firs't  to 
conspire  against  the  Protector  was  his  brother  Seymour, 
high  admiral  of  England.  Seymour's  aim,  apparently, 


xvn  EDWARD   VI  355 

was  to  make  the  princess  Elizabeth  his  wife  and  perhaps 
to  place  himself  beside  her  on  the  throne.  This  mad 
scheme  certainly  led  him  into  treasonable  practices,  and  154!) 
his  execution  reflects  no  discredit  on  the  Protector,  who 
showed  natural  feeling  on  the  occasion.  The  next  con-  155:3 
spiracy  was  more  formidable.  It  was  headed  by  Dudley, 
Duke  of  Northumberland,  son  of  Dudley  the  fiscal  myr- 
midon of  Henry  VII.,  and  heir  of  his  father's  character, 
who  also  had  designs  upon  the  crown.  The  Protector's 
display  of  sympathy  with  the  commons,  and  the  offence 
given  to  the  aristocracy  by  his  democratic  manifesto, 
combined  with  the  general  disorders  of  government, 
afforded  Northumberland  an  opening.  A  cabal  was 
formed  in  the  council,  before  which  the  Protector  fell. 
He  rose  again  with  dimmed  splendour  and  diminished 
authority.  But  Northumberland  persevered.  Somerset 
was  again  arrested  on  charges,  transparently  fictitious, 
of  treason  and  felony.  In  order  probably  to  give  mur- 
der a  colour  of  justice,  he  was  acquitted  by  the  peers 
who  tried  him  on  the  charge  of  treason,  but  found 
guilty  of  the  felony.  By  the  people,  whose  idol  he  still  1551 
was,  his  acquittal,  which,  seeing  the  axes  turned  from 
him  as  he  left  the  court,  they  supposed  to  extend  to  all 
the  charges,  was  hailed  with  a  burst  of  joy.  The  young 
king  in  his  diary  makes  a  dry  entry,  which  is  taken  as  a 
proof  of  his  want  of  feeling.  He  was  probably  deceived 
as  to  the  facts,  and,  even  if  he  knew  the  truth,  his  pen 
may  not  have  been  free. 

Something  was  gained  during  the  reign  by  constitu- 
tional liberty.  The  treason  law  of  Henry,  which  had 
been  enlarged  by  a  servile  parliament  into  an  unlimited 
warrant  for  the  destruction  of  the  king's  enemies,  was 


356  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP,  xvn 

1547   swept  away,  and  the  law  of  Edward  III.  was  restored. 

1552  Other  new-fangled  treasons  were  afterwards  added ;  but 
instead  of  conviction  or  attainder  without  evidence  in 
cases  of  treason,  it  became  law  that  two  witnesses  should 
be  required  and  that  they  should  be  confronted  with  the 
accused.  This  Act  ended  a  legal  reign  of  terror.  The 
statute  which  gave  royal  proclamations  the  force  of  law, 
and  that  which  empowered  a  king  on  coming  of  age  to 
cancel  laws  made  during  his  minority,  wrere  also  repealed, 
and  the  legislative  authority  of  parliament  was  thus,  in 
principle  at  least,  restored.  Nor  were  there  during  this 
reign  any  benevolences  or  forced  loans.  On  the  other 
hand,  there  was  repeated  and  scandalous  robbery  of  the 
subject  by  the  continued  debasement  of  the  currency,  of 
which  Henry  VIII.  had  set  the  example.  The  flight  of 
sound  money,  the  derangement  of  prices  and  wages,  and 
the  sufferings  consequent  on  the  demoralization  of  in- 
dustry and  commerce,  were  the  inevitable  results  of  this 
fraud,  while  scandalous  gains  were  made  by  members  of 
the  government  who  got  the  mint  into  their  hands.  A 
standing  army  of  foreign  mercenaries  was  introduced,  and 
the  gendarmerie,  as  it  was  called,  in  London  amounted  to 
nine  hundred  men. 


CHAPTER   XVIII 

MARY 

BORN  1516;  SUCCEEDED  1553;  DIED  1558 

TP  any  statesman,  or  historian  emulating  statesmen,  thinks 
that  good  will  come  of  doing  a  moderate  amount  of 
evil,  let  him  consider  what  all  the  fraud,  lying,  hypoc- 
risy, and  murders  of  the  government  of  Henry  VIII.  did 
towards  settling  the  succession  to  the  English  crown. 
The  only  son,  born  after  all  that  labour  of  infamy,  was 
dead.  Both  his  sisters  had  been  bastardized,  and  upon 
their  demise  the  question  was  open  between  claimants  by 
descent  and  claimants  under  the  will  of  Henry  VIII., 
whose  title,  created  by  the  Act  of  a  single  parliament, 
conflicted  with  the  established  custom  of  the  realm.  As 
to  the  Reformation,  which,  as  well  as  the  succession,  is 
supposed  to  have  needed  the  service  of  iniquity,  it  was 
now  about  to  fall  into  the  hands  of  the  daughter  of  the 
divorced  wife,  exasperated  against  it  by  her  mother's 
wrongs  and  by  her  own. 

The  headship  of  the  nation,  once  elective,  had  been 
so  far  converted  into  the  heritable  property  of  a  family 
as  to  admit  what  John  Knox  still  denounced  as  the 
monstrous  regiment  of  women. 

The  death  of  Somerset  had  deprived  the  protestant 
party  of  the  one  man  who,  with  all  his  faults  and  errors, 
had  gained  something  like  a  national  leadership,  and 

357 


358  THE  UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

might  have  controlled  the  situation.  To  save  the  re- 
ligious revolution  there  was  but  one  way,  to  set  aside 
Mary,  send  her  back  to  her  cousin  the  Emperor,  and 
resettle  the  succession  by  Act  of  parliament  on  a  protes- 
tant  heir.  This,  though  hardly  possible  in  face  of  the 
general  belief  that  Mary  was  the  lawful  heiress,  and  of 
the  discredit  into  which  the  protestant  government  had 
fallen,  might  conceivably  have  been  done.  There  could 
be  only  one  end  to  the  attempt  to  make  the  dying  king 
exercise  a  power,  which  no  one  believed  him  to  possess, 
in  favour  of  Lady  Jane  Grey,  or  rather  of  her  father- 
in-law,  Northumberland,  under  her  name.  Jane,  grand- 
daughter of  Mary  sister  of  Henry  VIII.,  was  postponed  by 
his  will,  sanctioned  by  parliament,  to  his  daughters  Mary 
and  Elizabeth.  Cranmer,  by  complying  with  the  plot,  once 
more  showed  his  weakness.  Northumberland's  usurpa- 
tion failed,  as  it  was  sure  to  fail,  and  brought  the  assassin 
of  Somerset  to  his  merited  doom,  while  his  wretched 
recantation  of  protestantism  under  the  terrors  of  death 
showed  what  sort  of  leader  the  cause  had,  and  what 
sort  of  ruler  the  realm  would  have  had  in  him.  Not  only 
was  there  a  national  feeling  in  favour  of  the  rightful  heir, 
which  Northumberland's  government  by  persecuting  Mary 
had  enhanced,  but  there  was  a  general  reaction  against 
the  revolutionary  violence  in  matters  of  religion  which 
had  marked  the  reign  of  Northumberland  as  well  as  that 
of  Somerset.  Tired  of  iconoclasm,  which  was  often  at- 
tended with  profanity  and  disorder,  most  of  the  people 
were  not  unwilling  to  be  led  back  to  the  ancient  paths. 
"  Bloody  Mary  "  was  a  good  woman  spoiled  by  circum- 
stance and  religious  superstition.  Apart  from  her  Span- 
ish blood  and  her  own  tendencies,  how  could  the  daughter 


xvin  MARY  359 

of  the  injured  Catherine  of  Aragon  have  been  anything 
but  a  bitter  enemy  of  the  Reformation?  She  was  not 
cruel  by  nature.  She  had  at  first  spared  Lady  Jane 
Grey  and  Guildford  Dudley.  She  would  have  shed  very 
little  blood  upon  the  scaffold  had  not  the  rebellion  of  1554 
Carew  and  Wyatt  shaken  her  throne  and  driven  her, 
according  to  the  notions  of  policy  which  then  prevailed, 
to  measures  of  severity.  Her  religious  persecutions  did 
not  spring  from  thirst  of  blood,  but  from  her  passionate 
desire  to  bring  back  her  subjects  to  the  only  religion 
which  could  save  their  souls,  and  the  belief,  which  she 
shared  with  the  most  enlightened  men  of  her  time,  that 
it  was  right,  and  her  bounden  duty,  to  use  her  power  for 
that  purpose.  Untrue  to  us,  her  religion  was  true  to  her, 
and  she  must  be  judged  by  a  standard  which  in  those 
days  superstition  had  falsified  alike  for  all.  Nor  does 
she  seem  to  have  been  naturally  despotic.  She  wished 
to  act  with  parliament,  and  rejected  with  indignation 
the  suggestion  that  on  the  quibbling  pretext  that  stat- 
utes applied  only  to  kings,  not  to  queens,  she  should  set 
herself  above  the  law.  Her  reign  opened  in  a  popular  1553 
way  with  the  remission  of  taxes  and  the  abrogation  of 
new-fangled  treasons,  the  latter,  no  doubt,  mainly  in  the 
interest  of  catholics,  and  notably  of  the  exiled  Cardinal 
Pole.  Hatred,  which  in  the  end  she  too  well  deserved, 
has  made  of  her  an  ogress.  The  truth  seems  to  be  that 
she  was  well  educated,  amiable  in  her  manners,  and, 
though  meagre,  not  unlovely,  until  she  was  made  hag- 
gard by  disease  and  grief.  Amidst  the  severe  trials  which 
she  had  undergone  from  the  ire  of  her  despotic  father, 
the  spite  of  his  second  wife,  and  the  vexatious  attempts 
of  her  brother's  government  to  force  her  into  conformity 


360  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

with  the  royal  religion,  she  had  borne  herself  well.  She 
had  on  her  side  the  hearts  of  the  great  majority  of  the 
people,  as  well  as  the  relic  of  the  old  nobility,  which  had 
remained  hostile  to  revolution.  Protestant  government 
had  not  shone  under  Somerset,  much  less  under  Northum- 
berland. Politicians  like  the  extremely  able  Paget,  who 
believed  little  in  religion  of  any  kind,  and  cared  less  for 
any  form  of  it,  would  think  only  of  a  peaceful  succession 
and  a  stable  government ;  and  of  these  Mary's  name  was 
the  pledge. 

1553  There  followed  a  counter-revolution  in  religion.  The 
parliament  through  which  it  was  effected  was  no  doubt 
packed  for  the  crown.  Still,  the  ease  with  which  Catholi- 
cism was  restored  throughout  the  country  seems  to  show 
that  protestantism  had  gained  no  strong  hold  upon  the 
mass  of  the  people.  It  was  probably  almost  confined  to 
the  towns.  To  the  clergy  generally  the  return  from  pro- 
testantism to  Catholicism  was  no  doubt  welcome.  Pro- 
testant bishops  were  ejected  from  their  sees ;  catholic 
bishops  were  reinstated.  Gardiner  and  Bonner  came 
out  of  prison  in  triumph  to  put  themselves  at  the  head 
of  the  reaction.  Foreign  protestants  were  expelled. 
The  body  of  Peter  Martyr's  wife,  who  had  been  buried 
in  the  cathedral  at  Oxford,  was  dug  up  and  cast  upon  a 
dunghill.  Of  the  English  reformers  many  fled  to  the 
city  of  Calvin.  Cranmer  stayed  at  Lambeth  meekly 
awaiting  his  fate,  which  came  to  him  in  the  shape  of 
attainder  for  treason  in  attempting  to  give  the  crown 
to  Jane  Grey.  The  Mass  and  the  whole  catholic  sys- 
tem of  worship,  doctrine,  and  discipline  were  restored. 
Catholic  visitations  undid,  as  far  as  they  could,  what 
protestant  commissions  had  done ;  the  ravages  made  in 


xvin  MARY  361 

images,  painted  windows,  and  shrines  by  the  hammer 
of  protestantism  they  could  not  restore.  Married  bishops 
and  clergy  were  summarily  expelled.  The  ecclesias- 
tical legislation  of  the  last  reign  was  bodily  swept  away. 
The  statute  for  the  burning  of  heretics  was  re-enacted.  1554 
The  impious  title  of  supreme  head  of  the  church  was 
renounced  by  the  queen.  The  supremacy  of  the  pope 
was  again  recognized,  and  the  gate  of  the  realm  opened 
to  his  missives.  In  defiance  of  the  statute  of  Prae- 
munire,  Cardinal  Pole  was  received  as  the  pope's  legate.  1654 
He  came  in  triumphant  ecstasy  to  reconcile  England  to 
Rome.  This  he  did  at  a  solemn  assembly  of  parliament, 
and  having  done  it  he  pronounced  the  papal  absolution. 
So  far  reaction  swept  the  field.  But  the  Reformation, 
though  it  had  not  been  national  as  a  doctrinal  move- 
ment, had  been  national  as  a  revolt  against  clerical 
tyranny  and  against  the  intrusive  despotism  of  a  for- 
eign power.  Foreign  to  England,  and  in  a  measure 
to  all  nations  but  Italy,  the  papacy  has  been.  To 
the  Teutonic  nations  it  was  more  foreign  than  to  the 
Latin.  On  this  line  something  of  a  stand  was  made 
by  Paget  and  other  politicians,  who,  though  they  might 
not  object  to  transubstantiation,  did  object  to  priestly 
or  papal  rule.  Even  Gardiner,  though  the  leader  of 
the  doctrinal  reaction,  was  in  his  way  patriotic,  and  did 
not  wish  to  see  England  under  the  feet  of  Rome.  He 
had  not  only  acknowledged  the  royal  supremacy  under 
Henry  VIII.,  but  had  written  in  vindication  of  it.  On 
another  point  the  pope  and  his  representative  encoun- 
tered a  resistance  which  was  not  to  be  overcome.  The 
new  proprietary  absolutely  refused  to  part  with  the 
church  lands,  and  made  its  secure  retention  of  them 


362  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

an  indispensable  condition  of  its  assent  to  the  catholic 
restoration.  It  thus  in  effect  sold  the  national  religion 
for  a  quiet  title  to  its  own  acres.  Quieted  formally 
and  by  law,  ecclesiastical  as  well  as  civil,  the  title  now 
was  ;  yet,  so  long  as  catholic  sentiment  prevailed,  it  was 
clouded  by  sacrilege,  and  a  bond  thus  remained  between 
the  owners  of  the  church  lands  and  the  protestant  cause. 

Monasticism,  the  mainstay  of  the  religious  reaction,  had 
received  its  death-blow  in  the  dispersion  of  its  votaries, 
the  confiscation  of  its  estates,  the  demolition  of  its  dwell- 
ings. Little  was  done  towards  its  restoration  when  three 
monasteries  were  refounded  by  the  queen. 

Whatever  reactionary  laws  or  governments  might  do, 
the  English  Bible  remained,  and  while  the  English  Bible 
remained  all  efforts  to  stamp  out  protestantism  were  vain. 
In  one  other  all-important  respect  the  work  of  Henry  VIII. 
and  his  executors  continued  in  force.  This  counter-revo- 
lution was,  like  the  revolution,  practically  brought  about 
by  the  secular  power.  It  followed  upon  a  demise  of  the 
crown.  The  state  retained  its  virtual  supremacy  over  the 
church. 

That  application  of  the  hereditary  principle  which 
places  a  woman  at  the  head  of  the  state  exposes  the  state 
to  the  chances  of  her  marriage.  Bishop  Gardiner  would 
have  had  the  queen  marry  an  Englishman.  Her  marriage 
1554  with  Philip  of  Spain  lost  her  the  heart  of  the  nation.  It 
aroused  a  jealousy,  which  neither  Spanish  diplomacy  nor 
Spanish  gold  could  appease,  and  which  the  character  of 
Philip,  a  type  of  the  bigotry  and  haughtiness  of  his  race, 
was  not  likely  to  allay.  The  wording  of  the  marriage 
treaty,  securing  the  independence  of  England,  was  strict; 
but,  as  a  bold  member  of  the  House  of  Commons  said,  if 


xvni  MARY  363 

the  agreement  was  broken,  who  was  to  sue  upon  the  bond  ? 
The  immediate  consequence  was  Wyatt's  rebellion,  and  1654 
though  this  was  repressed,  and  the  queen  gained  by  her 
courageous  bearing  on  that  occasion,  she  was  henceforth, 
as  the  bride  of  Spain,,  fatally  estranged  from  her  own 
people. 

Now,  as  afterwards  in  the  reign  of  James  II.,  all 
depended  on  the  birth  of  an  heir.  The  passionate  yearn- 
ings and  prayers  of  Mary  for  offspring,  her  distracted 
hopes,  and  their  tragic  disappointment  will  hardly  seem 
fit  subjects  for  mockery  to  a  generous  heart.  It  is  some- 
thing of  a  tribute  to  her  honesty  that  there  seems  to  have 
been  no  fear  of  a  warming-pan,  such  as  there  was  in  the 
case  of  James  II.  Chagrin  caused  by  her  barrenness,  by 
the  coldness  and  absence  of  her  husband,  and  by  the 
national  hatred  which  she  must  have  felt  to  be  gathering 
round  her,  appear  to  have  combined  with  disease  in  giv- 
ing her  character  a  turn  for  the  worse.  At  all  events,  she 
devoted  herself  with  her  whole  soul  to  the  extirpation  of 
heresy  and  the  restoration  of  her  realm  to  the  true  faith. 
The  means  which  she  used,  hideous  as  they  were,  were 
prescribed  to  her  by  law  and  sanctioned  by  the  almost 
universal  sentiment  of  the  time.  Cranmer  had  been  a 
party  to  the  burning  of  Anabaptists,  and  Latimer  had 
preached  a  sermon  when  the  catholic  Father  Forest  was  1538 
put  to  a  death  of  torture  by  swinging  him  in  an  iron 
cradle  over  the  flames.  We  may  well  allow  that  Mary 
believed  herself  to  be  doing  God's  work,  and  a  work  not 
of  cruelty  but  of  mercy.  It  is  the  easier  for  us  to  admit 
her  plea  since  her  policy  was  fatal  to  her  cause.  It 
brought  her  into  mortal  conflict  not  with  the  law  or  with 
theory,  but  with  humanity  in  the  hearts  of  the  people. 


364  THE   UiNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

In  the  Marian  persecution  there  were  burned,  according  to 
the  received  authority,  five  bishops,  twenty-one  divines, 
eight  gentlemen,  eighty-four  artificers,  a  hundred  husband- 
men, servants,  and  labourers,  twenty-six  wives,  twenty 
widows,  nine  unmarried  women,  and  four  children.  In 
this  roll  of  martyrs  the  gentry  are  poorly  represented,  the 
aristocracy  not  at  all.  Probably  not  a  single  holder  of 
abbey  lands  died  for  the  cause  to  which  he  owed  them. 
It  was  hard  for  a  rich  man  to  enter  by  fire  into  the 
kingdom  of  heaven.  Cranmer's  weakness,  as  has  been 
acutely  remarked,  excited  public  pity  probably  even  more 
than  the  unshaken  courage  of  Hooper,  Latimer,  and  Ridley. 
It  showed  how  terrible  was  the  trial.  Near  the  spot  where 
Cranmer,  Latimer,  and  Ridley  suffered,  triumphant  protes- 
tantism raised  in  our  century  a  monument  to  their  mem- 
ory which  revived  Catholicism  compared  to  the  pile  of 
stones  heaped  upon  Achan. 

By  Gardiner,  an  ecclesiastical  martinet,  the  signal  for 
persecution  seems  to  have  been  given;  but  its  cruelty  was 
ascribed  by  popular  opinion,  which  is  not  likely  to  have 
been  wrong,  to  Bonner,  noted  for  his  brutality,  whose 
diocese  furnished  the  largest  number  of  victims.  On  par- 
liament rests  the  responsibility  of  reviving  the  heretic- 
burning  laws.  The  queen  herself  undoubtedly  urged  on 
the  holy  work  of  extirpating  heresy;  probably  she  was 
the  chief  mover;  but  her  council  must  share  with  her  the 
blame.  The  Spaniards  had  little  to  do  with  the  religious 
atrocities,  though  they  were  true  to  their  character  in 
pressing  measures  of  political  ferocity,  such  as  the  execu- 
tion of  Jane  Grey,  and  would,  probably,  if  they  could, 
have  had  Elizabeth  put  to  death.  Charles  V.  was  not 
fanatical,  nor  were  statesmen  bred  in  his  school.  Their 


xvni  MARY  365 

hatred  of  heresy  was  political,  and  they  were  wise  enough 
to  see  that  the  Spanish  marriage  and  the  stake  at  the  same 
time  were  too  much.  A  Spanish  friar  was  put  up  to  dis- 
connect them  and  Philip  from  the  persecution  by  preach- 
ing against  it.  A  literary  worshipper  of  Henry  VIII.  has 
cast  the  blame  on  Pole.  Stung  to  the  heart  l>y  Henry's 
conduct  in  rending  the  seamless  garment  of  Christ  and 
shedding  the  blood  of  Fisher  and  More,  Pole  had  written 
with  violence  and  had  acted  with  indiscretion.  He  seems 
to  have  been  a  man  of  sensibility  and  impulse,  but  he  was 
no  bigot.  For  a  catholic  and  a  cardinal  he  was  liberal,  a 
friend  to  reconciliation  and  comprehension,  a  believer  in 
the  Lutheran  doctrine  of  justification  by  faith,  an  oppo- 
nent of  the  Jesuits.  The  suspicion  of  Lutheranism  still 
clove  to  him,  and  he  was  mistrusted  and  his  legateship  was  1557 
at  last  cancelled  by  the  fanatic  Paul  IV.  He  publicly 
told  the  clergy  that  the  best  way  of  reclaiming  the  people 
was  not  by  measures  of  severity,  but  by  reforming  their 
own  lives.  On  one  occasion  he  let  go  with  a  mere  sub- 
mission twenty-two  heretics  whose  case  had  been  laid 
before  him  by  Bonner.  He  believed  that  the  burnings 
were  lawful,  and  he  might  at  last  be  led  to  show  zeal 
in  the  execution  of  the  law  by  a  sense  of  his  own  posi- 
tion as  a  suspected  liberal  and  the  object  of  mistrust 
at  Rome.  It  has  been  insinuated  that  he  had  Cranmer 
burned  in  order  that  he  might  take  possession  of  the 
archbishopric.  Cranmer,  having  been  attainted  of  treason 
by  the  state  and  degraded  by  the  church,  was  civilly 
and  ecclesiastically  dead,  and  could  no  longer  stand  in 
Pole's  way.  The  burnings  were  confined  to  the  south 
and  east  of  England.  Tunstall,  Bishop  of  Durham,  to  his 
lasting  honour,  refused  to  take  any  part  in  them.  It  is 


366  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAF.   xvm 

true  that  the  north  was  still  mainly  catholic,  and  that 
in  Tunstall's  diocese  not  many  victims  would  have  been 
found.  The  martyrdoms  purged  protestantism  in  the 
national  mind  of  the  stain  which  it  had  contracted  under 
the  rnisgovernment  of  Edward  VI. 

The  epithet  which  has  clung  to  Mary's  name,  if  not  in 
its  obvious  sense  deserved  by  her,  is  a  sign  of  that  hatred 
of  bloodshed  which  is  a  happy  part  of  the  character  of  the 
English  people.  Her  misfortunes,  as  she  would  think,  her 
sins,  as  her  people  thought,  were  crowned  by  the  loss  of 
1558  Calais,  the  name  of  which  she  was  patriotic  enough  to  say 
would  be  found  engraved  upon  her  heart  when  she  was 
dead.  The  loss  which  forever  closed  to  English  ambition 
the  gate  of  conquest  in  France  was  a  great  gain  in 
disguise. 


CHAPTER   XIX 

ELIZABETH 
BORN  1533;  SUCCEEDED  1558;  DIED  1603 

A  FTER  Mary,  her  Spanish  husband,  and  her  persecu- 
tions, the  accession  of  Elizabeth  came  like  sunrise 
after  the  murkiest  night.  The  peril  to  which  she  had 
been  exposed,  especially  after  Wyatt's  rebellion,  when 
the  Spaniards  sought  her  blood,  had  more  than  ever  en- 
deared her  to  the  nation.  Her  youth,  her  good  looks, 
her  high  spirit  and  princely  carriage,  with  her  mental 
accomplishments,  which  were  remarkable,  awakened  an 
enthusiasm  of  which  she  had  the  tact  to  make  the  most. 

A  writer,  who,  before  he  had  studied  the  history  of 
Elizabeth,  spoke  of  her  as  "the  great  nature  which, 
in  its  maturity,  would  remould  the  world,"  having 
studied  her  history,  can  only  speak  of  her  as  a  little 
figure  at  the  head  of  a  great  age,  and  has  to  admit  that 
her  policy  everywhere  was  "  partial,  feeble,  and  fretful," 
that  "  wherever  her  hand  is  visible  there  is  always  vacilla- 
tion, infirmity  of  purpose,  and  general  dishonesty,"  while 
where  her  subjects  act  for  themselves  the  opposite  quali- 
ties appear.  False  and  perfidious  she  was,  heartless  and 
selfish,  capable  at  times  of  hateful  cruelty,  possessed  with 
a  vanity  such  as  could  hardly  dwell  in  the  same  breast 
with  greatness,  to  say  nothing  of  her  indelicacy  and  at 
least  one  darker  stain,  for  if  she  was  not  criminally  cog- 

367 


368  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

nizant  of  the  murder  of  Amy  Robsart,  she  certainly 
prompted  to  the  assassination  of  Mary  queen  of  Scots. 
Yet  Elizabeth,  in  spite  of  all  revelations  and  dissections, 
keeps  the  title  of  the  Great  Queen.  Writers  again 
bestow  it  upon  her  after  recounting  the  proofs  of  her 
littleness.  They  say,  with  scant  justice  to  her  sex,  that, 
after  all,  she  had  only  the  faults  of  a  woman.  She  had 
the  sense  to  keep  good  counsellors,  though  she  preferred 
to  them  unworthy  favourites  and  sometimes  treated  them 
with  base  ingratitude.  She  had  remarkable  arts  of  popu- 
larity when  she  chose  to  exert  them.  She  had  a  queenly 
bearing  tempered  with  condescension.  She  had  personal 
courage  which  was  needed  in  an  era  of  assassination. 
She  knew  how  to  identify  herself  with  the  nation.  Her 
sex  in  a  chivalrous  age  made  her  the  object  of  a  devotion 
which  was  enhanced  by  her  danger.  The  nation  in  its 
mortal  conflict  with  catholic  enemies  felt  itself  imper- 
sonated in  its  queen.  Something  also  her  reputation 
gained  from  the  contrast  of  her  reign  with  the  political 
troubles  which  followed,  albeit  of  those  troubles  her  self- 
will  was  in  part  the  cause.  The  illusion  was  strong.  It 
was  strong  enough  in  her  lifetime  to  make  men  fancy 
themselves,  or  at  least  say  that  they  fancied  themselves, 
in  love  with  a  virago  who  spat,  swore,  and  cuffed ;  and 
this  when  she  was  past  middle  age  and  the  last  traces  of 
her  youthful  comeliness  had  fled.  But  those  who  still 
call  her  great,  if  they  do  more  than  pay  tribute  to 
custom,  have  before  their  mind's  eye,  not  the  figure  of 
the  queen  in  the  grotesque  trappings  of  her  vanity ;  but 
the  figures  of  Burghley  and  Walsingham,  of  Sir  Philip 
Sidney  and  Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  of  Shakespeare  and 
Spenser,  of  Drake  and  Frobisher,  of  the  heroic  mariners 


xix  ELIZABETH  369 

of  England  returning  from  the  attack  on  Cadiz  or  the 
victory  over  the  Armada. 

A  young  queen  was  fortunate  in  having  already  at  her 
side  so  wise  a  counsellor  as  Cecil,  presently  made  Lord 
Burghley.  To  Cecil  were  then,  or  afterwards,  added  Sir 
Nicholas  Bacon,  lord  keeper,  and  Walsingham,  with  other 
ministers  and  diplomatists  of  the  same  school,  such  as 
Knollys,  Randolph,  and  Davison.  To  say  that  these  men 
opened  the  line  of  English  statesmen  would  be  too 
much ;  Morton,  Fox,  and  Wolsey  fully  deserved  the 
name  ;  yet  as  a  group  there  had  been  nothing  like  them, 
and  they  were  wholly  devoted  to  the  country,  while  their 
ecclesiastical  predecessors  had  steered  the  vessel  of  state 
with  one  eye  fixed  on  Rome.  The  offspring  of  revolu- 
tion, trained  amid  intrigue  and  conspiracy,  they  had 
learned  to  read  men  and  to  walk  with  a  sure  foot  in 
slippery  paths.  They  had  seen  and  accepted  too  many 
changes  of  religion  to  be  enthusiasts  on  either  side,  or 
allow  bigotry  to  cross  their  policy.  To  them  protestant- 
ism was  the  religion  of  England,  Catholicism  was  the 
religion  of  her  foes.  Burghley  was  at  the  head  of  the 
government,  and  perhaps  he  was  not  the  less  qualified 
for  that  post  if  he  was  rather  sagacious,  firm,  and  wary 
than  a  man  of  commanding  genius.  But  the  pilot  who 
weathered  the  storm  was  Walsingham,  a  man  supremely 
able,  absolutely  devoted  to  the  public  service,  and  ready 
to  sacrifice  to  it  not  only  all  interests  and  lives  that  stood 
in  its  way,  but  almost  his  own  soul.  He  was,  in  fact,  an 
austere  and  puritan  Machiavel.  He  did  not  scruple 
to  adopt  the  enemy's  weapons,  and  he  was  the  artificer  and 
operator  of  the  espionage  which  penetrated  and  bafiBed  the 
counsels  of  the  Jesuits  and  the  Guises. 

VOL.  i  —  24 


370  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

The  labour  of  these  men  must  have  been  great.  We 
hear  of  them  as  sitting  in  council  from  eight  in  the  morn- 
ing till  the  dinner  hour,  and  then  till  supper  time.  Their 
correspondence  was  very  heavy.  On  the  other  hand, 
they  had  no  demands  of  the  platform  to  meet,  and  com- 
paratively little  trouble  with  parliament  or  the  press. 
Their  councils  were  deliberative  in  a  different  sense  from 
those  of  a  parliamentary  debating  club  speaking  to  re- 
porters. Such  of  them  as  were  not  favourites  were  ill 
paid.  Walsingham  left  not  enough  to  pay  for  his  burial. 
Burghley  had  private  wealth. 

First  came  another  counter-revolution,  which  proved  a 
final  settlement,  at  least  for  two  generations,  in  religion. 
Had  Elizabeth  been  born  a  catholic,  a  catholic  she  would 
have  remained.  A  ritualist  she  was.  In  her  chapel,  to 
the  scandal  of  hearty  protestants,  stood  the  crucifix 
with  the  lighted  tapers  before  it.  She  disliked  married 
clergy,  and  treated  their  wives  with  the  insolence  which 
always  lay  beneath  her  gracious  airs.  She  announced 
her  accession  to  the  pope,  and  although  this  might  be 
a  politic  compliment  paid  by  her  advisers  to  catholic 
opinion,  it  was  probably  in  full  accordance  with  her  own 
leanings.  Apart  from  her  ritualistic  tastes,  the  natural 
sympathies  of  a  sovereign,  and  a  sovereign  full  of  her 
sacred  right,  could  not  fail  to  be,  like  those  of  sovereigns 
generally,  with  the  religion  most  congenial  to  authority. 
But  the  daughter  of  Anne  Boleyn  had  been  born  un- 
der the  ban  of  the  papacy.  Bastard  as  she  was  in  the 
eyes  of  Rome,  her  only  title  to  the  crown  was  anti-papal, 
while  there  was  a  claimant  at  once  papal  and  legitimate 
in  the  person  of  Mary  queen  of  Scots.  Elizabeth's  part 
was  decisively  cast  for  her  when  the  Vatican  not  only 


xix  ELIZABETH  371 

repelled  her  overtures,  but  in  course  of  time  deposed  her   1570 
and  absolved  her  subjects  from  their  allegiance.     Whether 
she  would  or  not,  the  queen  of  England  became  the  head 
of  the  protestant  cause  in  Europe. 

Once  more  the  authority  of  the  pope  was  renounced 
and  his  power  was  retransferred  to  the  crown,  though 
the  queen  did  not,  like  Henry  VIII.,  assume  the  title  of 
the  head  of  the  church,  but  was  content  with  the  declara-  1559 
tion  that  she  was  over  all  persons  and  in  all  causes,  as 
well  ecclesiastical  as  civil,  supreme.  Once  more  the  Mass 
was  abolished  and  prohibited.  Once  more  the  whole 
sacerdotal  system,  of  which  the  Mass  was  the  centre,  with 
monasticism,  purgatory,  saint-worship,  was  swept  away. 
Once  more  the  protestant  pastorate  took  the  place  of 
the  Roman  priesthood.  The  protestant  Articles  of  Ed-  1563 
ward  VI.  were  repromulgated,  with  slight  variation,  as 
the  standard  of  faith.  The  English  Prayer  Book  of 
Edward  VI.  again  supplanted  the  Roman  ritual,  with  1559 
the  wise  omission  of  anti-papal  passages  specially  offen- 
sive to  the  catholic  ear.  Clergymen  were  again  prac- 
tically licensed  to  marry.  Auricular  confession,  if  it  was 
not  abolished,  was  discontinued.  To  Rome  and  her 
liegemen,  at  all  events,  it  was  made  clear  that  England 
was  once  more  protestant. 

Of  the  protestant  character  of  the  Articles  there  can 
be  no  doubt,  and  it  is  to  them  surely,  as  an  original  mani- 
festo, not  to  the  liturgy,  where  the  object  of  the  compiler 
was  to  retain  as  much  as  possible  of  the  customary  and 
familiar,  that  we  must  look  for  the  doctrine  of  the  church. 
In  the  liturgy,  however,  there  remained  enough,  if  not 
of  Catholicism,  of  ritualism,  to  give  it  the  air  of  a 
compromise  at  the  time  and  make  it  a  store  of  argu- 


372  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

ments,  or  pretexts,  for  the  revival  of  Catholicism  in  the 
Anglican  establishment  at  a  later  day.  The  name 
"  priest "  was  retained,  and  its  former  associations  lingered 
with  it.  The  catholic  vestiary  was  not  wholly  discarded. 
While  the  confessional  was  swept  away,  something  like 
the  practice  of  auricular  confession,  in  which  the  catholic 
soul  had  found  comfort,  was  retained,  at  least  in  a  per- 
missive shape.  But  it  is  in  the  form  of  administering 
the  eucharist  that  the  spirit  of  compromise  most  plainly 
appears.  There  we  have  two  pairs  of  sentences,  the 
first  sentence  in  each  of  which  embodies,  not  indeed  the 
doctrine  of  transubstantiation,  yet  the  sacrificial  view, 
while  the  merely  commemorative  view  is  embodied  in  the 
second.  Kneeling  at  the  eucharist  was  retained. 

To  the  shrewd  and  worldly  statesmen  of  Elizabeth  such 
a  compromise,  no  doubt,  seemed  profoundly  wise.  They 
thought,  not  without  apparent  reason,  that,  something 
being  left  of  the  old  forms  of  worship,  some  quarter  even 
being  given,  in  the  liturgy,  if  not  in  the  Articles,  to  the 
old  creed,  the  parish  church,  with  its  chimes,  font,  and 
graveyard,  the  immemorial  centre  of  social  as  well  as 
religious  life,  would  retain  its  charm  for  the  mass  of  the 
people,  and  the  upshot  would  be  general  acquiescence  in 
the  national  religion.  But  the  sequel  showed  that  the 
domain  of  compromise  is  interest,  not  belief.  Neither 
catholic  nor  thoroughly  protestant,  the  establishment  was 
cut  off  from  both  sources  of  religious  zeal.  When  in 
after  times  sap  returned  to  the  tree,  it  was  either  from 
the  catholic  source,  as  in  the  era  of  Laud  and  afterwards 
of  the  Oxford  movement,  or  from  a  protestant  source,  as 
in  the  case  of  the  Puritans  or  of  the  evangelical  party, 
Methodists  within  the  pale  ;  and  with  the  disturbance 


xix  ELIZABETH  373 

consequent  on  irruption  from  without.  The  attractions 
of  a  religious  kind  which  the  establishment  had  were 
antiquity,  dignity,  gentility,  tradition,  a  degree  of  cere- 
monial suited  to  Anglo-Saxon  taste,  and  the  social  in- 
fluences of  the  parish  church.  Great  Anglican  writers 
were  coming  to  give  these  attractions  their  full  force. 

The  policy  of  religious  compromise,  however,  might 
have  been  more  successful  had  not  catholic  non-conform- 
ity been  sustained,  hallowed,  and  inflamed  by  Rome 
and  the  emissaries  of  Rome.  For  Catholicism,  on  the 
verge  of  destruction,  had  rallied  round  its  centre,  had 
in  some  measure  reformed  itself,  had  renewed  its  force, 
and  entered  on  the  second,  the  Ultramontane,  era  of  its 
existence.  Jesuitism  had  come  to  its  aid,  and  the  Jesuit, 
gliding  over  Europe,  was  warring  against  protestantism 
with  intrigue  and  sometimes  with  worse  weapons.  Royal 
despotism,  especially  in  Spain,  felt  that  its  cause  was 
bound  up  with  that  of  the  despotism  of  the  priest,  and 
lent  itself  with  all  its  power  to  the  ecclesiastical  reaction. 

Instead  of  the  direct  appointment  of  bishops  by  the 
crown  and  during  its  pleasure,  which  was  the  extreme 
policy  of  the  revolution,  the  form  of  election  by  the 
chapter  was  restored,  though  with  the  congS  cTSlire  which 
practically  vested  the  appointment  in  the  sovereign,  for 
whose  nominee  the  electors  were  forced  to  vote  under 
penalty  of  the  dread  Prsemunire,  while  the  crown's  power 
of  dismissal  at  will  was  allowed  to  fall.  This  made  room, 
as  at  a  later  day  appeared,  for  the  revival  of  apostolical 
succession  and  of  all  that  hangs  thereby. 

"  The  full  power,  authority,  jurisdiction,  and  supremacy 
in  church  causes,  which  heretofore  the  popes  usurped  and 
took  to  themselves,  is  united  and  annexed  to  the  imperial 


374  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

crown  of  this  realm."  This  transfer  of  ecclesiastical  su- 
premacy from  the  pope  to  the  king  was  and  remained 
the  distinguishing  feature  of  the  Anglican  Reformation. 
Its  symbol  in  the  churches  was  the  substitution  of  the 
royal  arms  for  the  rood.  Severance  from  the  centre  of 
the  catholic  faith  drew  after  it  doctrinal  innovation. 

The  papal  jurisdiction  thus  transferred  to  her  Eliza- 
beth took  power  to  exercise  through  a  high  commis- 
sion for  the  regulation  of  the  church,  the  censorship  of 
public  morals,  and  the  correction  of  the  clergy.  Thus 

1583  the  Court  of  High  Commission  enters  on  its  ill-starred 
career. 

Communion  with  the  protestant  churches  of  the  con- 
tinent was  ostensibly  maintained  and  their  orders  were 
now  and  long  after  this  accepted  as  valid.  But  the  inti- 
macy of  the  connection  ceased  ;  the  opinion  of  the  pro- 
testant divines  of  Germany  and  Geneva  was  no  longer 
sought,  nor  were  they  welcomed  to  England.  Episcopacy 
combined  with  royal  supremacy  proved  to  be  practically 
a  dividing  line. 

This  revolution  was  made  by  the  government  with  a 
parliament  which  did  the  government's  bidding.  Con- 
vocation feebly  protested ;  but  its  protest  was  disre- 
garded and  served  only  to  show  that  the  conscience  of 

1559  the  clergy  was  coerced.  By  the  Act  of  Supremacy,  vest- 
ing supreme  power  in  the  crown,  combined  with  the  Act 

1559  of  Uniformity  regulating  the  national  religion  by  author- 
ity of  parliament,  the  church  of  England  was  finally 
stamped  as  a  state  establishment,  with  the  head  of  the 
nation  as  its  head,  and  for  its  real  legislature  the  na- 
tional assembly.  To  use  again  a  phrase  of  later  coinage, 
the  settlement  was  Erastian,  presenting  a  contrast  alike 


xix  ELIZABETH  376 

to  the  papal  theocracy  and  to  the  ministerial  or  demo- 
cratic theocracy  of  Geneva  or  Scotland.  Nor  was  the 
clerical  convocation  destined  ever  to  recover  its  power. 
Episcopacy  was  the  form  of  church  government  congenial 
to  monarchy,  and  was  retained  where  the  Reformation 
was  monarchical,  as  in  England  and  Sweden,  while  it 
disappeared  where  the  Reformation  was  democratic  or 
aristocratic,  as  in  Germany,  Scotland,  or  Holland.  In 
its  retention,  and  in  the  claim  of  the  bishops  to  apostoli- 
cal succession  with  the  sole  power  of  ordination  lurked 
the  only  remnant  of  ecclesiastical  independence. 

While  the  Anglican  church  was  thus  made  a  function 
of  the  state,  the  commonwealth  was  narrowed  to  the  pale 
of  the  Anglican  church,  those  who  refused  to  take  the 
oath  of  supremacy  and  conform  to  the  established  mode 
of  worship,  whether  catholics  or  non-conforming  protes- 
tants,  being  excluded  from  the  House  of  Commons  and 
from  all  political  power.  It  was  of  little  moment  that  the 
few  catholic  peers  were  retained,  in  deference  to  the  aris- 
tocracy, in  the  House  of  Lords.  Here  we  have  the  origin 
of  the  long  struggle  for  catholic  emancipation  and  the 
abolition  of  religious  tests  which  has  ended  in  the  entire, 
or  almost  entire,  secularization  of  the  commonwealth,  while 
the  church  still  remains  in  bondage  to  the  state. 

Of  the  inferior  clergy  almost  all  conformed.  Of  the 
bishops  who  had  been  deeply  committed  by  the  perse- 
cution under  Mary,  and  could  not  for  shame  turn  their 
coats,  fifteen  resigned,  while  only  one,  Kitchin,  Bishop  1559 
of  Llandaff,  conformed.  Most  of  the  deans  and  heads 
of  colleges  also  resigned.  It  was  necessary  in  effect  to 
create  a  new  episcopate,  and  the  number  of  bishops  held 
requisite  for  consecration  was  barely  made  up  out  of  the 


376  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

survivors  of  the  ejected  episcopate  of  Edward,  itself  not 
so  indisputably  consecrated  as  to  escape  the  malicious 
criticisms  of  an  enemy  naturally  tempted  to  assail  this 
weak  link  in  the  Anglican  succession.  The  story  of  the 
consecration  at  the  Nag's  Head  without  the  requisite 
forms  is  an  exploded  fiction.  Yet  it  must  be  owned,  if 
apostolical  succession  is  essential  to  spiritual  life,  that 
the  spiritual  life  of  the  English  church  and  nation  here 
hung  by  a  slender  thread.  Parker,  the  primate,  was  a 
fair  type  of  compromise,  being  a  student  of  the  Fathers, 
and  having  about  him  so  much  of  the  high  churchman 
that  a  society  dedicated  to  the  diffusion  of  high  church 
learning  has  been  enrolled  under  his  name. 

There  was  at  the  time  little  resistance  to  the  change. 
The  protestant  martyrs  had  not  suffered  in  vain.  The 
testimony  of  their  blood  had  sunk  deeper  than  argument 
into  the  hearts  of  the  people,  while  the  church  by  which 
they  were  murdered  had  made  herself  hated  in  propor- 
tion. The  impression  was  the  stronger  because  most 
of  the  sufferers  came  from  lowly  homes.  Spanish  con- 
nection had  wounded  patriotism.  The  character  of  Bon- 
ner  had  tainted  his  cause.  But  the  rude  north  was 
still  mainly  catholic.  So  were  the  leaders  of  the  old 
nobility ;  not  only  the  northern  lords,  the  Earls  of 
Northumberland  and  Westmoreland,  but  the  chief  of 
all,  the  Duke  of  Norfolk,  who  could  say  that  on  his 
bowling-green  at  Norwich  he  felt  himself  the  peer  of  any 
prince  in  Christendom.  In  these  quarters  conspiracy,  and 
in  the  north  formidable  rebellion,  arose.  Religious  dis- 
affection, opening  the  doors  to  catholic  intrigue  from 
abroad,  was  a  danger  with  which  statesmen  had  always  to 
contend.  In  the  districts  of  the  south  and  east,  which 


xix  ELIZABETH  377 

were   best   peopled,  and  where  wealth   mainly  lay,  pro- 
testantism, or  at  least  conformity,  prevailed. 

It  is  not  unlikely  that  some  active  and  inquiring 
minds,  stirred  not  satisfied  by  the  controversy,  had  shot 
beyond  the  bounds  of  protestantism,  even  the  most  thor- 
oughgoing, and  anticipated  the  speculations  of  later  times. 
Giordano  Bruno  found  congenial  company  in  England. 
Freethinking  probably  had  its  seat  among  Bohemians 
like  the  dramatists  Marlowe  and  Greene.  Something 
like  it  subtly  pervades  Shakespeare.  But  as  yet  it  had 
no  force. 

Severe,  nay  cruel,  laws  were  at  once  passed  against  1559 
the  recognition  of  papal  supremacy  and  for  the  enforce- 
ment of  conformity  to  the  state  religion.  But  during 
the  first  twelve  years  of  Elizabeth's  reign  there  were  no 
catholic  martyrs,  though  the  heresy  law  was  still  put  in 
force  against  Anabaptists,  the  Anarchists  of  that  day. 
When  the  mortal  conflict  between  Catholicism  and  pro- 
testantism was  raging,  when  Alva  and  Parma  were  at 
their  work  of  extermination  in  the  Netherlands,  when  the  1576 
Guises  and  the  League  were  at  the  same  work  in  France, 
when  the  massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew  had  been  perpe-  1572 
trated  and  had  been  glorified  by  the  pope,  when  the 
pope,  after  long  hoping  and  being  somewhat  encouraged 
to  hope,  that  Elizabeth  would  repent  and  bring  her 
kingdom  back  to  the  church,  had  at  length,  despairing 
of  her  conversion,  deposed  her  and  absolved  her  sub-  1570 
jects  from  allegiance,  when  at  last,  responding  to  his 
call,  a  great  catholic  power  took  arms  against  her,  when 
the  Armada  was  being  fitted  out  in  the  ports  of  Spain, 
when  the  Jesuit  was  creeping  about  England  on  his 
dark  mission,  when  among  his  disciples  plots  were  being 


378  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

formed   against   the   queen's   life,  when   conspiracy  was 
1569   rife  among  the  catholic  nobility    and  the  catholic  north 
1581    was  in  rebellion,  the  laws  against  the  Mass  were  put  in 
sq'     execution,  and  Catholicism  had  its  martyrs.     It  was  now 
a  question,  not  of  religious  orthodoxy  or  conformity,  but 
of   the  life  of   the  nation.     There  were  no   burnings  of 
the   catholics   for   heresy,   there  was  no    Inquisition,  no 
racking   of   the   religious   conscience.     Mass-priests   suf- 
fered, not   merely  as   dissenters,  but  as   enemies   of  the 
state.      The    pope    had    done    his    best   to   stamp    upon 
them  as   his   liegemen   that   character  when   he  deposed 
the   queen.      Nor  was   their   case   altered   when   he  an- 
nounced that  his  Bull  might  be  taken  to   be  suspended 
until  execution  of  it  could  be  had. 

This  policy  nevertheless  was  wrong.  Men  convicted  of 
treason,  whether  in  the  interest  of  the  pope  or  in  any 
other  interest,  deserved  to  pay  the  penalty,  and  when 
the  nation  was  in  mortal  peril  could  hardly  look  for 
mercy.  The  Jesuit,  as  a  member  of  an  order  of  con- 
spiracy, and  an  apostle  not  only  of  rebellion  but  of  as- 
sassination, might,  whenever  he  was  caught  within  the 
protestant  lines,  have  been  lawfully  treated  as  a  public 
enemy.  Even  against  him  the  use  of  the  rack  was  de- 
testable, little  as  it  might  beseem  a  familiar  of  the  Inqui- 
sition to  protest.  Walsingham  said  that  knowledge  could 
not  be  bought  too  dear;  it  was  bought  too  dear  when 
it  was  bought  at  the  expense  of  humanity.  But  for  the 
catholics  in  general,  so  long  as  they  did  nothing  disloyal, 
took  part  in  no  plots,  published  no  Bulls  of  deposition, 
harboured  no  Jesuits,  entered  into  no  correspondence 
with  the  enemy,  and  answered  the  call  to  arms  in  de- 
fence of  the  nation,  the  treatment  prescribed  by  wisdom 


xix  ELIZABETH  379 

as  well  as  justice  was  that  of  toleration.  That  policy 
succeeded  in  Holland,  though  perhaps  it  was  easier  in  a 
rebel  republic  than  it  would  have  been  under  royal  su- 
premacy. The  best  defence  of  the  nation  was  unity, 
which  in  this  case  only  toleration  could  produce.  For 
the  conduct  of  the  government  nothing  can  be  pleaded 
but  the  agony  of  peril  and  the  fallacy  of  the  age.  It 
received  a  noble  rebuke  when  catholics  obeyed  the  call 
to  arms  in  defence  of  the  country  against  the  Armada. 

Not  less  urgent  in  their  way  than  the  religious  ques- 
tion were  the  financial  and  economical  difficulties  with 
which  the  statesmen  of  Elizabeth  had  to  deal.  They 
found  the  government  bankrupt,  public  faith  impaired, 
the  currency  in  a  deplorable  state  of  debasement,  trade 
in  consequence  demoralized,  the  problems  of  pauperism 
and  vagrancy  unsolved.  They  restored  the  finances.  By 
a  daring  measure  they  effected  a  reform  of  the  cur-  1560 
rency,  which  was  justly  accounted  one  of  the  glories 
of  the  reign,  and  which  came  seasonably  to  meet  the 
great  influx  of  silver  from  Spanish  America.  By  thus 
giving  assurance  of  a  return  to  honest  government 
they  breathed  new  life  into  commerce,  which  they  con- 
tinued to  foster  by  such  means  as  with  the  lights  of  those 
times  they  could.  The  question  of  pauperism  they  settled, 
after  one  more  fruitless  trial  of  severity,  by  a  Poor  1593 
Law,  which  remained  in  force  far  into  the  present  cen- 
tury, establishing  in  place  of  voluntary  contribution  a 
legal  right  to  parochial  relief.  The  country  gentleman 
or  squire,  landlord  and  justice  of  the  peace,  whose  figure 
we  now  discern,  his  tenant  farmers  on  their  home- 
steads, and  the  farm  labourer  in  his  cottage  with  right 
to  parochial  relief,  together  form  the  new  manorial  sys- 


380  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

tern  which  replaces  the  feudal  manor.  Not  only  the 
castle  but  the  castellated  mansion  has  departed,  and  its 
place  is  taken  by  the  peaceful  beauty  of  the  Elizabethan 
manor  house  or  hall.  It  is  true,  perfect  tranquillity  and 
order  did  not  come  at  once.  There  was  still  a  good  deal 
of  marauding,  at  least  there  was  a  good  deal  of  hanging. 
Strype  speaks  of  forty  executions  in  one  county  in  a  year. 
Yet  the  state  of  the  country  social  and  economical  during 
the  reign  was  progressively  good.  Insurrection  was 
religious  and  political,  not  social  as  under  Edward  VI. 
Manufactures  received  an  impulse  from  the  influx  of 
Flemish  weavers  whom  Spanish  tyranny  and  persecution 
had  driven  from  the  great  hives  of  textile  industry  in  the 
Netherlands.  Compared  with  continental  states  ravaged 
by  the  religious  war,  the  island  kingdom  was  a  haven  of 
industrial  prosperity  as  well  as  of  peace. 

A  great  part  of  Elizabeth's  reign  is  a  glorious  gap  in 
political  history.  Politics  are  almost  lost  in  the  struggle 
for  national  existence,  and  the  history  is  military  or 
diplomatic.  The  page  is  filled  by  the  efforts  of  statesmen, 
to  support  the  protestant  and  English  interest  in  Scotland 
against  that  of  the  Guises,  in  France  to  protect  the  same 
interests  against  the  same  dark  power  ;  by  the  deeds  and 
sufferings  of  the  English  auxiliaries  in  the  Netherlands 
and  in  France  ;  by  the  war  with  Spain  upon  the  sea 
and  the  defeat  of  the  Armada.  Patriotism  takes  the 
form  of  loyalty  to  the  head  of  the  nation,  and  a  practical 
dictatorship  for  the  public  salvation  is  accorded  to  the 
government,  as  it  was  accorded  to  the  American  govern- 
ment during  the  war  of  Secession.  Shakespeare  is  full  of 
patriotic  fire.  But  in  the  mirror  which  he  holds  up  to  his 
age  no  political  forms  are  seen.  He  is  himself  monarch- 


xix  ELIZABETH  381 

ical,  dislikes  the  mob,  laughs  a  little  at  the  sectaries, 
girds  at  the  pope,  though  he  makes  no  allusion  to  the 
struggle  with  papal  Spain  or  to  the  Armada.  But  there 
is  not  a  trace  in  him  of  party  feeling  or  of  interest 
in  constitutional  questions.  To  him  king  John  is  the 
king  of  England  defending  the  realm  against  the  French 
invader.  Of  the  Great  Charter  he  says  not  a  word.  By 
Raleigh  in  his  "  Prerogative  of  Parliament "  the  Great 
Charter  is  flouted.  Raleigh  himself  is  a  type  of  the 
Elizabethan  character,  and  of  its  relation  to  political 
history.  He  is  extravagantly  loyal,  an  almost  slavish 
courtier,  to  rise  in  the  queen's  favour  being  the  sum  of 
his  ambition,  and  at  the  same  time  intensely  patriotic. 
He  is  a  hero,  an  intriguer,  and  a  corsair.  The  exuberant 
life-blood  of  a  nation  renewing  its  youth  shows  itself  in 
his  versatile  energy  as  politician,  man  of  letters,  soldier, 
sailor,  colonizer,  and  inventor  ;  of  religion  he  has  so  little 
as  to  be  suspected  of  atheism,  but  he  is  a  protestant  at 
least  for  the  purpose  of  fighting  the  Armada  and  raiding 
on  the  Spanish  main.  There  was  again  danger  of  a  lapse 
into  arbitrary  government.  But  the  antidote  in  the 
form  of  a  religious  party  and  of  the  economical  changes 
which  produced  an  independent  gentry  was  at  hand. 

By  the  conflict  itself,  indeed,  moral  forces  and  energies 
were  called  forth  which  could  hardly  have  sunk  into 
servitude.  A  school  of  protestant  chivalry  was  formed, 
broader,  more  human,  and  nobler  than  the  chivalry  of 
the  middle  age.  Its  star  was  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  who, 
wounded  on  the  field  of  Zutphen,  passed  the  cup  of  water  1586 
from  his  own  fevered  lips  to  those  of  a  suffering  comrade, 
and  whose  death  was  deplored  by  a  nation  penetrated 
with  his  spirit  as  a  great  public  calamity.  Its  poet  was 


382  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAI-. 

Spenser,  the  English  Tasso,  whose  crusaders  are  the 
champions  of  protestant  truth  going  forth,  not  against 
the  Paynim,  but  against  the  giants  and  enchanters  of  the 
papal  Duessa.  That  with  this  chivalry  some  ferocity 
should  mingle  was  inevitable  in  those  times.  At  its 
worst  it  never  equalled  the  ferocity  of  the  Spaniards  or 
the  League.  Above  all,  there  was  a  glorious  develop- 
ment of  maritime  prowess  and  adventure.  If  in  Drake, 
Hawkins,  Frobisher,  Cavendish,  and  Walter  Raleigh  there 
was  far  too  much  of  the  buccaneer,  the  sea  in  those  days 
was  almost  beyond  the  pale  of  international  law,  and  the 
pretension  of  Spain  to  bar  the  gate  of  the  west  against 
mankind  greatly  provoked  mankind  to  burst  the  bar.  The 
Spanish  Inquisition  too  was  at  work  and  had  English  mari- 
ners in  its  dens.  In  the  great  struggle,  while  Catholicism 
with  its  terrible  Spanish  legions  dominated  by  land,  pro- 
testantism with  its  daring  mariners,  English  and  Dutch, 
was  supreme  at  sea.  The  intrepidity  of  these  mariners, 
when  we  consider  the  smallness  of  their  barques,  their  lack 
of  charts,  of  any  instrument  of  observation  better  than  the 
astrolabe,  even  of  a  perfect  knowledge  of  the  use  of  the 
compass,  fills  us  with  wonder,  and  we  feel  that  however 
much  the  world  in  our  day  may  have  surpassed  them 
in  science,  it  can  hardly  have  hearts  so  strong.  Sea- 
men can  take  no  part  in  politics,  and  Great  Britain 
owes  her  liberty  largely  to  her  good  fortune  in  having, 
as  an  island,  a  navy,  not  a  standing  army,  for  her  de- 
fence. But  the  character  of  the  seaman  has  worked 
into  that  of  the  nation  at  large  and  impregnated  it 
with  the  freedom  of  the  sea.  One  very  dark  blot  there 
is  on  the  page.  Hawkins  began  the  English  slave  trade, 
and  the  queen  shared  his  gains. 


xix  ELIZABETH  383 

Of  the  intellectual  quickening,  proofs  enough  are 
Shakespeare  and  Bacon.  In  Shakespeare,  with  his  little 
Globe  Theatre,  his  want  of  scenic  apparatus,  of  general 
culture,  and  of  models,  for  he  evidently  knew  nothing 
of  the  classical  drama,  we  are  struck,  as  in  the  case  of 
the  maritime  adventurers,  by  the  achievements  of  sheer 
power.  If  Bacon  did  not  advance  science  by  discover- 
ies, he  opened  the  gates  of  morning,  and  never  had 
science  so  magnificent  a  preacher.  He  carried  a  scien- 
tific spirit  into  politics,  as  well  as  a  touch  of  Machiavel. 

A  great  school  of  diplomatists,  such  as  Walsingham, 
Knollys,  Sadler,  and  Randolph,  was  also  formed,  and  if 
these  men  did  not  escape  the  obliquities  of  their  age, 
if  they  fought  the  power  of  evil  with  its  own  weapons,  it 
was  the  power  of  evil  which  they  fought,  while  the  mastery 
of  their  calling  which  they  acquired  was  equalled  by  their 
devotion  to  the  commonwealth.  Of  diplomacy  perhaps 
this  generation  is  the  zenith,  since  the  policy  of  Europe 
was  then  the  policy  of  courts,  in  which  personal  influ- 
ences held  sway. 

Elizabeth's  fancy  was  to  call  herself  a  Virgin  Queen. 
Marry  she  would  not,  though  parliament  and  the  nation 
earnestly  besought  her  to  choose  a  husband  and  give 
an  heir  to  the  throne.  She  fenced  and  dallied  with 
the  question,  the  threads  of  which  blend  laughably  with 
the  web  of  a  terribly  serious  diplomacy.  It  must  be 
owned  that  it  was  hard  to  call  upon  a  woman  to  wed  for 
a  political  end  against  her  inclination.  It  must  also  be 
owned  that  the  choice  among  the  available  princes  of 
Europe  was  narrow,  and  that  Alengon,  whom  the  queen 
pretended  to  like  best,  and  who  seemed  politically  the 
most  eligible,  was  undersized,  and  pock-marked,  with  a 


384  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

knobbed  nose,  a  croaking  voice,  and  a  character  not 
superior  to  his  person.  Here  we  come  once  more  upon 
a  drawback  of  female  sovereignty.  Elizabeth's  secret 
reason  for  declining  marriage  probably  was  her  unwilling- 
ness to  part  with  the  sole  power.  Marriage,  at  all  events, 
she  coquettishly  declined,  and  resolved  to  live  and  die 
a  virgin.  But  being  extravagantly  fond  of  admiration, 
she  consoled  herself  with  flirtations  which  gave  rise  to 
scandals  such  as  history  does  not  stoop  to  investigate. 
The  most  notable  of  these  flirtations  was  with  Robert 
Dudley,  Earl  of  Leicester,  a  handsome,  magnificent,  and 
bad  man.  Leicester  was  already  married,  as  Elizabeth 
knew,  to  Amy,  daughter  of  Sir  John  Robsart,  a  country 
knight.  So  near  had  he  come  to  winning  his  sover- 
eign's hand  and  a  seat  beside  her  on  the  throne,  that  to 
1560  rid  his  ambition  of  that  obstacle  his  young  wife  was  put 
out  of  the  way.  Of  this  fact  there  can  scarcely  be  a 
doubt.  Elizabeth,  though  she  would  not  marry  him, 
though  she  even  in  a  wayward  mood  tendered  him  as  a 
husband  to  the  queen  of  Scots,  continued  her  dalliance 
with  him  when,  as  Burghley  said,  he  was  "infamed  by 
the  death  of  Ms  wife."  Infamed  in  a  high  degree  he  was. 
But  for  a  time  by  his  intrigues  he  almost  supplanted 
Burghley.  When  he  went  as  commander  to  the  Nether- 
lands his  vanity  and  incapacity  appeared.  Sir  Chris- 
topher Hatton  was  recommended  to  the  chancellorship 
and  a  seat  in  the  privy  council  by  his  handsome  figure 
and  his  grace  as  a  dancer.  He  addresses  Elizabeth  in 
the  language  of  frantic  passion.  Looks  and  dress  were 
known  passports  to  the  favour  of  the  royal  maiden,  and 
the  flattery  of  courtiers,  even  to  the  last,  was  a  mimicry 
of  love.  Henry  IV.  of  France  fell  diplomatically  into 


xix  ELIZABETH  385 

the  fashion,  and  tried  to  make  the  English  ambassador 
believe  that  he  was  ravished  with  the  portrait  of  a  lady 
of  sixty-four,  and,  as  an  ungallant  historian  remarks, 
with  small  black  eyes  and  a  hooked  nose,  black  teeth, 
and  a  red  wig.  It  was  fortunate  for  the  nation  and 
creditable  to  the  queen  that,  on  the  whole,  ministers 
who  had  not  the  art  of  love,  but  had  the  art  of  saving 
their  country,  were  able  to  hold  their  own  in  council 
against  the  lovers,  though  the  lovers  got  the  praise  and 
the  reward. 

The  balance  between  the  two  great  powers,  France  and 
Spain,  forms  the  key  to  the  foreign  policy  of  the  early 
part  of  the  reign.  The  rivalry  between  those  powers 
prevents  them  from  uniting  their  forces  against  the  heretic 
realm  which,  being  without  a  standing  army,  could  hardly 
have  resisted  their  trained  soldiery  and  experienced  cap- 
tains. English  statesmanship  inclined  to  the  Spanish 
connection,  while  Philip  of  Spain,  chief  defender  of  Ca- 
tholicism and  exterminator  of  heresy  as  he  was,  obedient 
to  the  injunction  of  his  politic  father,  cultivated  the 
alliance  with  England,  suspended  by  his  influence  the 
action  of  the  pope  against  her  government,  and  long 
declined  to  carry  the  papal  sentence  of  deposition  into 
effect.  A  passionate  desire  of  recovering  Calais  is  a 
strong,  though  secondary,  factor  in  the  English  policy. 
But  as  the  reign  goes  on  political  and  territorial  objects 
give  way  to  mortal  conflict  between  the  old  faith  and  the 
new,  which  sets,  not  nation  against  nation,  Spain  and  her 
allies  against  France,  but  the  two  religious  parties  in  each 
nation  against  each  other.  England  being  protestant  is 
compelled  to  take  the  protestant  side,  though  against  the 
bias  of  her  queen,  who  in  her  heart  hates  thorough- 
VOL.  i  —  25 


386  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

going  protestantism,  is  above  all  things  monarchical,  and 
shrinks  from  an  alliance  with  Scotch,  Dutch,  or  Huguenot 
insurgents  against  their  lawful  sovereign.  Elizabeth  is 
first  constrained  by  the  pressure  of  Cecil  and  her  pro- 
testant  councillors  to  support  the  reformers  in  Scotland 
against  the  Guise  influence  and  Mary  queen  of  Scots, 
which  she  does  unwillingly,  John  Knox  as  the  author  of 
the  u  Monstrous  Regiment  of  Women  "  being  an  especial 
object  of  her  hatred,  and  very  fitfully,  doling  out  assistance 
to  her  allies  with  a  niggardly  hand,  often  playing  them 
false  and  sometimes  driving  them  to  despair.  Presently 
she  is  constrained  not  less  unwillingly  to  send  help  to 
the  insurgent  Huguenots  in  France  and  to  the  insurgents 
against  Spain  in  the  Netherlands.  She  still  clings  to  the 
Spanish  connection,  and  is  fatuously  bent  on  its  renewal. 
The  forbearance  of  the  Spanish  king  lasts  long,  though  he 
is  sorely  provoked,  not  only  by  the  protestant  policy  of 
England  and  the  aid  lent  by  her  to  his  heretic  rebels,  but 
by  the  outrages  of  her  buccaneers.  At  last  it  gives  way. 
Upon  the  execution  of  Mary  queen  of  Scots  his  hesitation 
1588  ends,  and  his  Armada  sails.  Through  the  whole  of  the 
tangled  web  runs  as  a  connecting  thread  the  history  of 
Mary  queen  of  Scots. 

Elizabeth  and  Mary  queen  of  Scots  were  bound  to  be 
enemies  from  the  beginning.  Something  there  may  have 
been  in  it  of  feminine  rivalry.  One  of  the  women  was, 
the  other  would  fain  be,  a  beauty.  But  Mary  was  the 
legitimate  heir  to  the  crown  of  England,  excluded  only 
by  the  will  of  Henry  VIII.,  and  she  had  set  up  her  claims 
by  assuming  the  title  and  the  royal  arms.-  This  is  to  be 
borne  in  mind  when  Elizabeth  is  arraigned  for  churlish- 
ness in  refusing  Mary  a  safe-conduct  from  France  to  Scot- 


xix  ELIZABETH  387 

land,  and  for  her  intrigues  with  Mary's  subjects.  If  those 
intrigues  were  dark,  they  were  not  darker  than  those 
of  the  house  of  Guise  on  the  other  side.  To  put  an 
end  to  the  hostile  influence  of  France  in  Scotland  was 
on  the  part  of  the  English  government  a  vital  measure 
of  self-defence.  The  religious  struggle  had  now  tran-  ' 
scended  nationality  and  modified  civil  duty.  It  made 
the  Scotch  protestants  clients  of  the  queen  of  England, 
though  they  were  subjects  of  the  queen  of  Scots.  Of 
Mary's  devotion  to  the  catholic  cause,  and  determination 
to  crush  Scotch  Presbyterian  ism  whenever  she  had  the 
power,  there  could  be  no  doubt.  Rizzio  was  her  privy 
minister  in  playing  this  game.  To  the  young  queen,  cast 
among  such  a  crew  of  uncontrolled  and  stabbing  anarchs 
as  were  then  the  nobles  of  Scotland,  with  scarcely  a  trust- 
worthy adviser  or  a  true  heart  to  lean  on,  allowance  and 
pity  are  due ;  and  we  can  only  admire  the  constancy  with 
which,  unsupported  as  she  was,  she  withstood  the  attempts 
of  fanatical  preachers  to  bully  her  out  of  her  religion.  But 
she  was  working,  and  was  bound  to  work,  with  the  catho- 
lic powers  at  her  back,  against  the  great  cause ;  and  the 
liegemen  of  the  great  cause  were  bound  to  counteract  her 
working.  That  she  was  privy  to  the  murder  of  Darnley 
there  can  be  little  doubt.  But  the  man  could  hardly  be 
called  her  husband  who  when  she  was  with  child  had  burst 
into  her  chamber  "with  a  band  of  ruffians  and  butchered  1566 
Rizzio  almost  before  her  eyes.  When  Mary,  after  being 
deposed  and  signing  her  own  abdication,  fled  her  kingdom  1567 
and  took  refuge  in  England,  she  doffed  the  queen  and  1568 
became  subject,  as  a  sojourner,  to  the  law  of  the  land  in 
which  she  sojourned.  She  was  treated  as  a  prisoner,  and 
tor  a  prisoner  to  plot  escape  is  not  criminal.  Nor  was  it 


388  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

Mary's  fault  that  in  her  prison  she  was  the  lady  of  catholic 
romance,  the  cynosure  of  catholic  policy,  the  pivot  of 
catholic  conspiracy ;  that  in  her  cause  broke  out  the 

1569  rebellion  in  the  north  of  England,  headed  by  the  old 
catholic  nobility,  which  cost  the  Duke  of  Norfolk,  the 

1572  chief  of  that  nobility,  his  head.  But  if  Mary  herself 
plotted  treason,  above  all  if  she-  plotted  the  assassina- 
tion of  Elizabeth,  she  could  plead  no  privilege  for  crime. 
Her  conviction  was  lawful  and  just,  unless  a  trap  had  been 
laid  for  her.  The  protestants  had  clamoured  fiercely  for 
her  blood,  and  she  was  their  mark  when  they  formed  a 
great  vigilance  association  to  protect  the  life  or  avenge 
the  death  of  their  queen.  Elizabeth  wished  her  dead,  but 
wished  to  cast  the  responsibility  for  the  act  on  others. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  through  her  secretaries  she 

1587  solicited  Mary's  keepers,  Paulet  and  Drury,  to  make  away 
with  their  prisoner,  and  received  from  Paulet  the  indig- 
nant answer  of  a  man  of  honour.  At  last  she  signed  the 
warrant,  yet  pretended  that  it  had  been  issued  against  her 
wishes,  and  not  only  belied  her  act  to  the  king  of  Scots, 
but  went  through  the  farce  of  dismissing,  imprisoning, 
and  fining  Davison,  her  secretary  of  state,  for  pretended 
contravention  of  her  orders.  Great  must  have  been  the 
patriotism  of  statesmen  who  for  the  sake  of  England 
could  serve  such  a  mistress. 

In  the  Netherlands,  where  protestantism  and  freedom 
were  fighting  for  their  life  with  Philip  of  Spain,  Alva, 
and  Parma,  the  decisive  field  apparently  lay;  and  upon 
that  field  the  forces  of  England,  had  Henry  of  Navarre, 
Gustavus,  or  Cromwell  been  at  their  head,  or  had  a  free 
hand  been  given  to  Burghley  and  Walsingham,  would 
have  been  thrown.  But  Elizabeth  never  heartily  embraced 


xix  ELIZABETH  389 

the  cause  of  which  destiny  had  made  her  the  chief.  She 
loved  protestantism  not  much ;  political  freedom  she  loved 
not  at  all.  Her  trade  was  monarchy.  Her  heart  was 
in  her  trade,  and  it  never  was  thoroughly  with  the  Neth- 
erlands in  rebellion  against  their  king.  Her  dealings 
with  them  brought  upon  her  government  shame  which 
it  took  all  the  heroism  of  Sidney,  Norris,  and  Williams 
to  wipe  away.  In  her  eagerness  for  reconciliation  with 
the  king  of  Spain  she  apparently  was  on  the  brink  of 
being  cajoled  into  delivering  to  him  the  cautionary 
towns,  which  would  have  inflicted  a  lasting  stain  on 
the  honour  of  the  country.  Her  troops  were  sent  out, 
and  were  kept,  by  her  parsimony,  in  a  condition  which 
filled  their  commanders  with  despair.  They  were  cheated 
of  their  pay,  while  the  soldiers  of  the  Netherlands  were 
regularly  paid,  and  they  perished  in  numbers  from  want 
of  food  and  clothing.  On  their  return  from  the  war  the 
survivors  presented  themselves  famishing  and  half-naked 
at  the  palace  gates,  to  be  driven  away  with  threats  of  the 
stocks.  The  niggardliness  which  thus  starved  the  public 
service  and  wronged  the  soldier  probably  had  its  root  in  the 
love  of  power  and  unwillingness  to  be  beholden  to  par- 
liament. It  yielded  only  to  love.  Wealth  was  heaped 
on  Leicester  and  Hatton,  while  the  soldier  perished  of 
hunger. 

Hesitation  to  beard  Philip's  power  might  be  wise.  It 
would  have  been  hard  for  England  to  resist  his  veterans 
could  they  have  been  thrown  upon  her  coast.  Religion 
apart,  the  policy  of  balance  between  Spain  and  France 
had  much  to  commend  it.  But  when  the  die  had  been 
cast,  irresolution,  half-heartedness,  dilatoriness,  parsimony 
were  folly,  and  disloyalty  to  allies  was  worse. 


390  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

Of  all  the  war  memories  of  England,  the  most  glorious 
and  the  most  cherished  is  still  the  defeat  of  the  Armada. 
Trafalgar  and  Waterloo  saved  England,  and  Europe  with 
it,  from  the  domination  of  France,  which  in  any  case 
would  probably  have  died  with  Napoleon.  The  defeat 
1588  of  the  Armada  saved  England  and  Europe  from  a  night 
the  darkness  of  which  might  for  centuries  have  been 
broken  by  no  day.  That  it  transferred  to  England  and 
Holland,  and  ultimately  to  England,  the  dominion  of  the 
sea,  was  a  fruit  secondary  to  such  a  deliverance.  The 
qualities  displayed  by  the  seamen,  who,  in  their  small 
barques,  attacked, 'chased,  and  destroyed  the  floating  cas- 
tles of  the  Spaniard,  are  the  most  thoroughly  English  and 
appeal  most  to  the  English  heart.  The  whole  scene  of 
the  fight  in  the  channel,  of  the  fire-ships  at  Calais,  of  the 
flight  of  the  invader  round  Scotland,  and  his  wreck  on 
the  Scotch  and  Irish  coasts  by  storms  in  which  protes- 
tantism saw  the  hand  of  heaven,  is  one  of  the  most 
thrilling  and  tragic  in  the  history  of  war.  Let  the  fair 
share  of  the  glory  go  to  England's  Dutch  allies  in  the 
defeat  of  Philip  II.,  as  well  as  to  her  Prussian  allies  at 
Waterloo.  Let  the  victory  be  regarded  as  one  gained  not 
over  the  Spanish  people,  but  over  the  evil  spirit  which 
had  entered  into  Spain,  and  let  Spanish  pride  be  spared 
the  celebration. 

When  the  Armada  lay  ready  in  Spanish  ports,  England, 
and  protestant  Scotland  with  her,  were  in  the  extremity 
of  peril.  The  Armada  was  a  convoy  for  the  army  of 
Parma ;  and  had  Parma  with  his  legions  landed  in  Eng- 
land, there  was  no  regular  army  to  withstand  them.  In 
that  terrible  hour  what  was  the  queen  doing  to  fire  the 
heart  of  the  nation  and  prepare  for  the  defence?  She 


xix  ELIZABETH  391 

was  carrying  on  behind  the  back  of  her  allies  and  to  the 
despair  of  the  best  spirits  in  her  council,  notably  of  the 
great  Walsingham,  and  of  the  leading  mariners,  nego- 
tiations, not  less  fatuous  than  unworthy,  for  a  treaty 
with  the  king  of  Spain,  of  whose  falsehoods  and  those  of 
Parma  she  was  the  dupe.  Drake's  enterprise  against 
Cadiz,  which  crippled  the  enemy  by  an  immense  destruc-  1587 
tion  of  his  resources,  was  countermanded  by  her,  though 
happily  too  late,  and  Drake  was  rebuked  on  his  return. 
Instead  of  strengthening  her  armaments  to  the  utmost 
and  throwing  herself  upon  her  parliament  for  aid,  she 
clung  to  her  money-bags,  actually  reduced  her  fleet,  with- 
held ammunition  and  the  most  necessary  stores,  cut  off 
the  sailor's  food,  did,  in  short,  everything  in  her  power  to 
expose  the  country  defenceless  to  the  enemy.  Statesmen 
and  admirals  alike  held  up  their  hands  in  agony  at  her  con- 
duct. "  Why  will  not  your  Majesty,  beholding  the  flames 
of  your  enemies  on  every  side  kindling  around,  unlock  all 
your  coffers  and  convert  your  treasure  for  the  advancing 
of  worthy  men,  and  for  the  arming  of  ships  and  men-of- 
war  that  may  defend  you,  since  princes'  treasures  serve 
only  to  that  end,  and,  lie  they  never  so  fast  or  so  full  in 
their  chests,  can  no  ways  so  defend  them."  Such  was 
the  wail  of  a  faithful  servant  and  a  patriot,  which  fell 
upon  deaf  ears.  The  pursuit  of  the  Armada  was  stopped 
by  the  failure  of  the  ammunition,  which  apparently,  had 
the  fighting  continued  longer,  would  have  been  fatal  to 
the  English  fleet.  Treason  itself  could  scarcely  have  done 
worse.  The  spirited  speech  at  Tilbury,  instead  of  being 
a  defiance  hurled  in  the  face  of  the  Spaniard,  was  really 
hurled  at  his  back  some  days  after  his  flight.  The  coun- 
try saved  itself  and  its  cause  in  spite  of  its  queen.  And 


392  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  ou.u-. 

how  were  the  glorious  seamen  whose  memory  will  forever 
be  honoured  by  England  and  the  world  rewarded  after 
their  victory?  Their  wages  were  left  unpaid,  they  were 
docked  of  their  food  and  served  with  poisonous  drink, 
while  for  the  sick  and  wounded  no  hospitals  were  pro- 
vided. More  of  them  were  killed  by  their  queen's  mean- 
ness than  by  the  enemy.  Even  the  praise  the  queen 
bestowed,  not  where  it  was  due,  but  on  her  vile  favourite 
Leicester.  If  all  this,  unpardonable  in  a  man,  was  par- 
donable or  exempt  from  censure  in  a  woman,  the  in- 
ference is  that  a  woman  ought  not  to  be  at  the  head  of 
the  state,  at  least  when  the  state  is  threatened  by  an 
Armada. 

As  the  reign  wears  on,  and  the  danger  from  abroad 
passes  away,  home  politics  revive.  The  House  of  Com- 
mons shows  a  more  independent  spirit,  vindicates  its 
freedom  of  speech,  attacks  abuses,  moots  high  questions 
of  state,  challenges  prerogative,  opens,  in  fact,  the  irre- 
pressible conflict  between  government  by  prerogative  and 
government  by  parliament,  of  which  the  supremacy  of 
parliament  is  destined  to  be  the  result.  The  sources 
of  this  revival  are  two.  In  the  first  place,  owing  partly 
to  the  dissolution  of  the  monasteries,  which  threw  their 
lands  back  into  circulation,  there  have  grown  up  a  landed 
gentry  and  a  substantial  yeomanry,  who  are  not  under 
court  influence,  and  whose  choice  in  the  election  of  mem- 
bers of  parliament  it  is  not  so  easy  for  the  crown  to  control. 
The  gentry  find  their  way  into  the  House  of  Commons, 
and  they  have  their  order  and  the  yeomanry  at  their  back. 
In  the  second  place,  Puritanism  has  come  upon  the  scene. 
An  open  Bible  has  done  its  work ;  men  have  made  out  of 
it  for  themselves  a  Bible  religion,  independent  of  church 


xix  ELIZABETH  393 

teaching.  An  equivocal  religion  it  was,  and  equivocal, 
though  grand,  was  the  character  which  it  formed.  It 
took  the  whole  Bible  as  inspired,  confused  the  Old  Tes- 
tament with  the  New,  Judaism  with  the  Gospel  which 
was  a  reaction  from  it,  Christian  brotherhood  with  He- 
brew privilege,  the  spirit  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount 
with  that  which  breathes  in  such  stories  as  those  of  the 
slaughter  of  the  Canaanites,  the  killing  of  Sisera,  the 
hewing  of  Agag  in  pieces  before  the  Lord,  and  the  hang- 
ing of  Haman  and  his  ten  sons.  Catholicism  was  not 
Biblical;  it  had  little  of  the  Old  Testament;  it  was  a 
development,  though  distorted,  of  the  religion  of  Jesus. 
Whatever  might  be  its  superstition  and  its  priestcraft,  it 
did  not  cast  upon  life  or  character  the  shadow  of  the 
old  Covenant  with  its  tribalism,  its  sombre  and  angry 
prophecies,  its  Mosaic  law,  its  Mosaic  Sabbath,  its  nar- 
row conception  of  the  Chosen  People.  Puritanism  was 
Biblical  in  the  extreme ;  whatever  was  in  the  Bible  it  in- 
discriminately embraced,  whatever  was  not  in  the  Bible  it 
abjured.  But  compared  with  Catholicism  it  was  rational. 
Compared  with  Catholicism  it  was  tolerant,  though  its 
toleration  at  first  might  be  less  a  principle  than  the  ne- 
cessity of  a  struggling  minority,  or  a  consequence  of 
its  internal  divisions.  It  had  no  Inquisition,  no  Jesuits, 
no  Index,  no  autos-da-fS.  It  brought  man,  without  the 
intervention  of  church  or  priest,  into  direct  communion 
with  his  Maker.  Its  spirit  was  independent,  high,  and, 
in  the  battle  with  the  Evil  One,  heroic.  Its  morality, 
though  narrow,  austere,  and  somewhat  sour,  was  pure 
and  strong.  If  it  was  not  favourable,  it  was  not  hostile 
to  culture,  and  among  its  votaries  were  highly  cultured 
men.  Education  it  zealously  promoted  as  a  safeguard 


394  THE  UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

against  priestcraft   and   as   a   key   to   the   study   of   the 
Bible. 

Protestants  who  had  fled  from  Mary  to  the  continent 
brought  back  with  them  from  the  lands  of  Luther,  Calvin, 
and  Zwingli  aspirations  which  spurned  the  Anglican  com- 
promise, and  could  be  satisfied  with  nothing  less  than  a 
radical  reformation.  All  the  relics  of  papal  ritual,  the 
surplice,  the  cross  in  baptism,  the  sponsors,  the  marriage 
ring,  the  kneeling  at  the  reception  of  the  eucharist,  the 
administration  of  the  eucharist  in  private,  which  seemed 
to  make  it  a  sacrament,  not  a  communion,  these  men  de- 
1  sired  to  sweep  away ;  and  when  they  were  upbraided  for 
their  warmth  about  mere  forms,  they  might  truly  say,  as 
the  opponents  of  ritualism  in  our  own  day  have  said,  that 
the  forms  draw  doctrines  with  them.  Episcopacy  itself 
they  regarded  with  an  evil  eye,  and  desired  at  all  events 
to  limit  the  autocracy  of  the  bishop,  and  to  give  the  people 
a  voice  in  the  appointment  of  their  ministers  and  in  the 
administration  of  the  church.  They  made  war,  also,  on 
practical  abuses ;  on  the  loose  lives  of  the  clergymen,  such 
as  Shakespeare's  Sir  Hugh  Evans  and  Sir  Nathaniel,  and 
their  neglect  of  duties,  for  which  many  of  them,  as  ex- 
priests  of  Catholicism,  would  probably  have  little  aptitude 
and  less  relish ;  on  pluralism  and  non-residence,  for  which 
the  impoverishment  of  the  benefices  was  pleaded  as  an 
excuse,  but  which  left  many  parishes  without  a  pastor. 
Some  Puritans,  whose  leader  was  Cartwright,  were 
Presbyterian,  not  less  convinced  than  Episcopalians  of 
the  exclusively  divine  character  of  their  own  form  of 
church  government,  or  less  ready  to  impose  it  by  force 
on  others.  All  of  them,  while  they  desired  to  purify  the 
national  church,  believed  in  its  necessity  as  an  institution, 


xix  ELIZABETH  395 

and  in  the  duty  of  the  civil  ruler  to  uphold  it.  None  of 
them  dreamed  of  such  a  solution  as  a  tolerated  noncon- 
formity. None  of  them  were  in  principle  friends  to  reli- 
gious liberty.  Religious  liberty  found  its  only  champions 
in  the  Brownists  or  Independents,  who  were  proscribed 
and  persecuted  on  all  hands  as  near  kinsmen  to  the 
revolutionary  Anabaptist  and  a  scandal  to  the  protestant 
Reformation. 

Whether  Elizabeth's  ecclesiastical  title  was  head  or 
governor,  she  regarded  herself  as  in  all  church  mat- 
ters supreme.  In  that  sphere,  convocation  having  lost 
its  authority,  there  was  nothing  answering  to  a  parlia- 
ment to  curb  her  will.  She  styled  herself  the  Over- 
looker of  the  church,  and  she  could  hardly  have  uttered 
a  severer  satire  on  the  whole  system  of  church  establish- 
ments. To  credit  her  with  strong  religious  sentiments 
either  way  would  be  absurd ;  but  she  had  a  taste  for  the 
ritualism  which  the  Puritan  abhorred.  To  popery  she 
was  made  an  enemy  by  circumstance ;  Puritanism  she  her- 
self detested.  As  Strype  says,  "  She  would  suppress  the 
papistical  religion  that  it  should  not  grow,  but  would  root 
out  Puritanism  and  the  favourers  thereof."  Above  all  she 
was  for  uniformity,  conformity,  and  entire  submission  to 
her  will.  To  use  her  own  words,  she  was  determined 
"that  none  should  be  suffered  to  decline  either  on  the 
left  hand  or  on  the  right  hand  from  the  direct  line  lim- 
ited by  authority  of  her  laws  and  injunctions."  At  the 
beginning  of  her  reign,  while  her  throne  Avas  unsteady, 
she  promised  latitude  and  comprehension.  But  in  its 
latter  part,  the  danger  being  over,  she  began  rigor- 
ously to  enforce  conformity  and  to  persecute  the  Puri- 
tans, to  whose  enthusiastic  support  her  preservation  had 


396  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

been  mainly  due.  We  see  her  temper  in  the  Conventi- 
1593  cles  Act  of  1593,  passed  to  restrain  the  queen's  subjects 
in  obedience,  under  which  three  nonconformists,  Barrow, 
1593  Greenwood,  and  Penry,  suffered  death.  The  queen  acted 
against  the  advice  of  her  wisest  counsellors.  Burghley 
notably  protested  against  the  inquisitorial  character  of 
the  interrogatories  used  to  probe  the  consciences  of  min- 
isters, saying  that  he  did  not  think  the  Inquisitors  of 
Spain  used  so  many  questions  to  trap  their  prey.  He 
headed  a  memorial  signed  by  eight  privy  councillors 
against  depriving  people  of  good  pastors  for  conscien- 
tious dissent  on  points  ceremonial.  The  engine  of  per- 
secution was  the  court  of  high  commission,  consisting  of 
bishops,  privy  councillors,  and  officers  of  state,  through 
which  the  queen  had  taken  authority  to  exercise  her 
ecclesiastical  powers.  For  the  bishops  Elizabeth  showed 
no  respect.  But  she  insisted  that  they  should  do  her  will 
by  coercing  the  nonconformists  and  take  the  unpopularity 
on  themselves.  "  God,"  she  said  to  the  bishops,  "  hath 
made  me  the  Overlooker  of  the  church;  if  any  schisms 
or  errors  heretical  are  suffered  therein  which  you,  my 
lords  of  the  clergy,  do  not  amend,  I  mind  to  depose  you. 
Look  you,  therefore,  well  to  your  charges." 

Caring  nothing  for  sacraments  and  little  for  liturgies,  the 
Puritans  valued  above  all  the  ordinance  of  preaching ;  as 
they  naturally  might,  when  the  Word  was  almost  as  new 
as  it  had  been  at  the  first  promulgation  of  Christianity. 
They  provided  themselves  accordingly  with  preachers,  to 
do  for  them  what  the  'parish  clergy  could  not  or  would 
not  do  ;  and  to  hear  these  preachers  they  formed  their  own 
congregations.  The  queen  insisted  that  the  preachers  and 
the  conventicles  should  be  put  down.  Grindal,  the  arch- 


xix  ELIZABETH  397 

bishop  of  Canterbury,  an  excellent  old  man,  refused  to  be 
her  agent  in  depriving  the  people  of  what  they  thought, 
and  he  at  least  half  agreed  with  them  in  thinking,  the 
bread  of  spiritual  life.  For  this  the  queen  suspended, 
and,  had  she  dared,  would  have  deprived  him.  Grindal's  1577 
successor,  Whitgift,  a  narrow  disciplinarian,  Aylmer  of 
London,  and  other  bishops,  were  more  compliant,  and  by 
their  energy  in  suppressing  the  preachers  and  enforcing 
conformity  made  themselves  hateful  to  the  people.  The 
prisons  into  which  dissenters  were  thrown  were  in  those 
days  so  foul  that  confinement  in  them  was  little  better 
than  death,  and  one  sectary  could  boast  that  he  had  been 
in  thirty-two  prisons,  in  some  of  which  he  could  not  see 
his  hand  at  noon-day.  Against  the  persecuting  episcopate 
the  Puritans  waged  a  war  of  pamphlets.  They  set  up  a 
secret  press,  which  forms  a  new  feature  in  the  progress  of 
political  warfare.  The  more  violent  and  coarser  of  them 
assailed  the  bishops  in  a  series  of  tracts  under  the  name 
of  Martin  Marprelate,  full  of  the  most  intense  rancour  1587 
that  persecution  can  engender.  The  Puritans,  however, 
were  always  unshaken  in  their  loyalty  to  the  throne.  One 
of  them,  Stubbe,  when,  for  having  written  against  the  mar- 
riage of  Elizabeth  with  a  papist,  his  right  hand  was  cut  off,  1579 
had  waved  his  hat  with  his  left  hand  and  shouted,  "  Long 
live  queen  Elizabeth ! "  Burghley  appreciated  Stubbe 
though  queen  Elizabeth  did  not. 

Re-animated  thus  at  once  by  rural  independence  and  by 
Puritanism,  which,  the  catholics  being  excluded  by  their 
inability  to  take  the  oath  of  Supremacy,  there  was  no 
catholic  party  to  counterbalance,  the  House  of  Commons 
showed,  and  increasingly  as  the  reign  went  on,  a  force 
unknown  since  Lancastrian  days.  It  asserted  its  right,  in 


398  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

spite  of  rebukes  from  the  throne,  to  deal  with  the  highest 
questions  of  state,  such  as  the  queen's  marriage  and  the 
succession  to  the  crown.  It  moved  for  Puritanic  change 
in  the  formularies  and  ceremonies  of  the  church,  thus 
trenching  on  a  province  which  the  sovereign  regarded  as 
belonging  to  her  alone.  When  one  of  its  members  was 
1587  arrested  for  boldness  of  speech,  it  reclaimed  him  and  wel- 
1601  corned  him  back  with  cheers.  It  attacked  the  monopolies, 
by  grants  of  which  the  queen  enriched  her  favourites,  and 
enforced  her  consent  to  their  abolition,  which,  when  she 
found  it  inevitable,  she  gave  with  characteristic  tact  and 
grace.  Leaders  of  opposition  such  as  Peter  Wentworth, 
Strickland,  and  Yelverton,  stand  forward,  the  genuine 
precursors  of  the  leaders  of  the  Long  Parliament.  Went- 
worth refers  to  himself  as  meditating  his  speech  while 
walking  in  his  own  grounds;  so  that  parliamentary  oratory 
has  become  a  power.  The  language  held  in  debate,  after 
the  servility  of  the  preceding  age,  if  D'Ewes  correctly 
reports  it,  sounds  like  a  tocsin ;  "  We  are  expressly 
charged  by  our  constituents  to  grant  no  moneys  until 
the  queen  answers  resolvedly  what  we  now  ask.  Our 
towns  and  counties  are  resolute  on  this  subject."  The 
imperious  queen,  when  she  refused  to  marry  or  settle 
the  succession,  was  told  that  "she  was  a  step-mother  to 
the  country,  as  being  seemingly  desirous  that  England 
which  lived  in  her  should  expire  with  her  rather  than 
survive  her";  that  "kings  could  only  gain  the  affections 
of  their  subjects  by  providing  for  their  welfare,  both  while 
they  lived  and  after  their  death  " ;  and  that  "  none  but 
princes  hated  by  their  subjects  or  faint-hearted  women 
ever  stood  in  fear  of  their  successors."  "  All  matters," 
said  Mr.  Yelverton,  "  which  are  not  treason,  or  too  much 


xix  ELIZABETH  399 

to  the  derogation  of  the  imperial  crown,  are  in  place  here, 
and  to  be  permitted;  here,  I  say,  where  all  things  come  to 
be  considered  of,  where  there  is  such  fulness  of  power 
that  it  is  the  place  where  even  the  right  of  the  crown  is  to 
be  determined.  To  say  that  parliament  hath  no  power  to 
determine  of  the  crown  is  high  treason.  Men  come  not 
here  for  themselves,  but  for  their  countries.  It  is  fit  for 
princes  to  have  their  prerogatives  ;  but  even  their  prerog- 
atives must  be  straitened  within  reasonable  limits.  The 
princess  cannot  of  herself  make  laws ;  neither  may  she,  by 
the  same  reason,  break  laws." 

Hooker,  in  the  latter  part  of  the  reign,  though  the 
majestic  champion  of  Anglicanism  against  protestantism, 
is  popular  in  his  principles  as  to  the  origin  and  foundation 
of  government,  however  monarchical  and  hierarchical  he 
may  be  in  the  application.  Even  Bishop  Aylmer,  the 
persecutor  of  the  Puritans,  recognizes  the  two  Houses,  one 
representing  the  aristocracy,  the  other  the  democracy,  as 
powers  co-ordinate  with  the  crown,  and  says  that  if  they 
use  their  privilege  the  king  can  ordain  nothing  without 
them,  or  if  he  does,  it  is  his  fault  in  usurping,  and  theirs 
in  permitting  the  usurpation. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  was  no  such  approach  to 
responsible  government  as  was  made  by  the  Lancastrian 
parliaments,  which  claimed  a  control  over  the  appoint- 
ments to  the  council.  The  ministers  regarded  themselves 
as  the  queen's  servants  alone;  as  bound,  when  their  remon- 
strances had  failed,  to  do  her  will,  not  to  resign ;  and  as 
justified  in  all  that  they  did  by  her  command.  This  prin- 
ciple was  avowed  by  Burghley,  whose  conduct  on  some 
occasions,  especially  on  the  eve  of  the  Armada,  stood  in 
need  of  its  application ;  but  his  colleagues  also  seem  to 


400  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

have  acted  upon  it ;  at  least  none  of  them  resign,  The 
government  still  is,  and  is  deemed  by  all,  to  be  in  the 
sovereign,  though  it  is  held  under  the  advancing  shadow  of 
the  rival  power.  The  authority  of  the  sovereign  is  perpet- 
ual, that  of  parliament  is  intermittent,  and  its  existence  can 
be  suspended  at  the  pleasure  of  the  sovereign.  No  annual 
budget  and  supply  require  its  regular  presence.  For 
nearly  five  years  Elizabeth  called  no  parliament.  Nor 
was  the  connection  between  the  members  and  their  con- 
stituencies maintained  and  the  spirit  of  the  House  renewed 
by  periodical  elections.  The  crown  could  keep  the  same 
parliament  in  existence  as  long  as  it  pleased. 

One  proof  of  the  growing  power  and  independence  of 
the  House  of  Commons  is  the  reluctance  of  the  queen  to 
hold  parliaments.  Another  is  the  presence  in  the  house 
of  privy  councillors,  who  lead  for  the  government  much 
as  ministers  lead  now.  A  third  is  the  creation  or  revival 
of  a  number  of  small  boroughs,  which  are  evidently  in- 
tended to  furnish  safe  seats  for  placemen  or  nominees  of  the 
sovereign,  and  counterbalance  the  elections  of  independent 
gentlemen  by  the  counties.  A  seat  in  the  Commons,  in- 
stead of  a  burden,  is  becoming  an  object  of  ambition,  of 
which  the  appearance  of  bribery  at  elections  is  a  sinister 
sign. 

The  question  is  mooted  whether  residence  in  the  con- 
stituency should  be  required  as  a  qualification  for  election. 
It  is  decided  that  the  election  shall  be  free.  This,  at  the 
time,  is  rather  in  favour  of  the  courtiers  against  the  country, 
though  it  facilitates  the  election  of  lawyers,  who  on  some 
important  questions  formed  the  head  of  the  opposition 
lance.  But  it  decides  that  the  House  shall  be  a  council  of 
the  nation,  not  a  convention  of  local  delegates.  It  is  a 


xix  ELIZABETH  401 

noble  resolution,  from  which  modern  democracies,  notably 
that  of  the  United  States,  have  fallen  away. 

Against  the  Lords  the  House  of  Commons  distinctly 
asserted  the  exclusive  right  of  initiating  money  bills,  the 
ultimate  pledge  of  supreme  power.  An  attempt  of  the 
Lords  prompted  by  the  court  to  press  a  subsidy  bill  on 
the  Commons  was  resisted  by  Bacon,  who  seems  to  have 
thereby  forfeited  the  favour  of  the  queen. 

The  House  of  Lords  has  settled  down  from  a  muti- 
nous aristocracy  into  a  conservative  House  of  titled 
landowners  inclined  to  support  the  court  against  the 
commons,  or  attached  to  the  Liberal  side  chiefly  by 
possession  of  the  church  lands.  Elizabeth  creates  few 
peers,  and  these  are  courtiers.  From  their  ancient  claim 
to  advise  and  control  the  government  the  lords  have  been 
ousted  by  the  privy  council.  On  the  demise  of  the  crown, 
which  would  also  be  legally  a  demise  of  the  council,  a 
lord  laid  his  hand  in  the  name  of  his  order  on  the  helm  of 
state,  but  the  hand  was  speedily  withdrawn.  It  is  by  the 
council  that  the  new  king  is  proclaimed.  1603 

We  are  not  jet  clear  of  arbitrary  taxation  on  merchan- 
dise, still  claimed  by  prerogative  as  its  lawful  victim,  or 
even  from  forced  loans.  But  the  overthrow  of  monopolies 
proves  that  law  is  gaining  the  upper  hand.  Personal 
liberty  is  not  so  well  secured.  The  people  have  not  yet 
learned  that  the  rights  of  each  must  be  defended  if  they 
would  preserve  the  rights  of  all.  It  is  of  this  reign  that 
Hallam  is  speaking  when  he  says  that  in  trials  for  treason 
the  courts  were  little  better  than  the  caverns  of  murderers. 
The  star  chamber  assumes  the  exercise  of  a  residuary 
prerogative,  undefined  in  extent,  and  nonconformists  are 
arbitrarily  imprisoned  by  the  court  of  high  commission. 
VOL.  i  —  26 


402  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

There  is  a  disposition  to  introduce  martial  law,  and  the 
queen  wishes  to  apply  it  to  a  man  who  had  compassed  the 
death  of  her  favourite  Hatton.  The  peril  of  the  nation 
might  warrant  strong  measures ;  but  encroachment  did 
not  stop  there.  Still,  principle  remained  settled  and  was 
gaining  ground. 

The  last  object  of  Elizabeth's  affection,  Essex,  must 
,  have  been  a  favourite,  not  a  lover.  The  mad  insurrec- 
tion into  which  jealousy  of  his  court  rivals  hurried  him, 
1601  and  which  cost  him  his  life,  was  about  the  last  outburst  of 
aristocratic  anarchy,  while  Bacon's  conduct  in  the  impeach- 
ment of  his  friend  and  benefactor  is  a  repulsive  relic  of 
the  servility  which,  in  the  court  of  Henry  VIII.,  laid 
nature  and  friendship,  as  well  as  liberty  and  truth,  at  the 
despot's  feet. 

The  melancholy  which  fell  on  the  queen  in  her  last 
days  has  been  ascribed  to  political  disappointment  and  the 
sense  of  impending  change.  She  felt,  it  is  said,  that  the 
Tudor  system  of  government  and  society  was  passing 
away.  In  "rooting  out  Puritanism  and  the  favourers 
thereof "  she  had  certainly  not  been  successful.  Hallam 
thinks  that  her  popularity  had  declined.  He  says  that  the 
nation  cheated  itself  into  a  persuasion  that  it  had  borne 
her  more  affection  than  it  had  really  felt,  especially  in 
her  later  years.  Her  best  councillors  were  dead.  The 
tragedy  of  Essex,  even  if  he  was  nothing  more  than  a 
favourite,  may  well  have  contributed  a  shade  of  gloom. 
But  we  perhaps  need  look  for  no  deeper  cause  of  her 
chagrin  than  the  sense  of  desolation,  the  shadow  of 
coming  death,  and  the  feelings  of  a  woman  who  sees 
the  end  at  hand  after  having  coquetted  all  her  days  and 
refused  love. 


xix  ELIZABETH  403 

Change,  however,  was  impending  in  the  political  if  not 
the  social  sphere.  The  danger  of  attack  from  abroad  and 
the  catholic  powers  was  overpast;  that  of  civil  war  had 
long  been  left  behind.  The  need  of  an  autocrat  was  felt 
no  more.  A  powerful  class,  adverse  to  aristocracy,  had 
grown  up ;  a  religion  adverse  to  the  hierarchy  with  which 
autocracy  was  identified  had  taken  deep  root.  On  the 
other  hand  the  monarchy  still  regarded  itself  as  of  right 
autocratic,  while  among  the  clergy  a  hierarchical  and  rit- 
ualistic reaction  had  set  in.  Thus  the  clouds  were  fast 
gathering  out  of  which  would  break  the  elemental  war. 

Elizabeth  had  resolutely  declined  to  settle  the  succession 
to  the  crown.  Parliament  had  remonstrated  with  her 
strongly,  even  sternly,  but  in  vain.  In  this,  as  in  her 
refusal  to  give  the  crown  an  heir  by  marrying,  she  was 
most  likely  influenced  by  unwillingness  to  part  with 
power.  She  had  no  mind,  she  said,  to  be  buried  before 
her  death.  This  feeling,  which  clung  to  her  even  on  her 
death-bed,  was  near  consigning  the  nation,  for  which  she 
professed  a  maternal  affection,  to  civil  war.  She  had  no 
power  without  parliament  to  bequeath  the  crown,  still 
less  to  bequeath  it  by  word  of  mouth.  Though  the  king 
of  Scots  was  the  heir  to  the  crown  by  blood,  the  parlia- 
mentary title  under  the  will  of  Henry  VIII.,  which  an 
Act  of  parliament  had  made  law,  was  in  the  house  of 
Suffolk,  while  there  was  another  claimant  in  the  person 
of  Arabella  Stuart  as  a  native,  James  being  an  alien  born. 
The  council  cut  the  knot,  averted  confusion,  and  united 
the  crowns  by  proclaiming  James  of  Scotland  king  of  1603 
England. 


CHAPTER   XX 

JAMES   I 
BORN  1566;   SUCCEEDED  1603;  DIED  1625 

rpHE  histories  of  Scotland  and  Ireland  now  mingle  their 

streams  with  that  of  the  history  of  England. 
The  history  of  Scotland  since  the  victory  of  Robert 
Bruce  had  been  the  chronic  struggle  of  a  feeble  monarchy 
with  a  lawless,  turbulent,  and  rapacious  nobility.  Bruce 
himself,  before  he  died,  had  been  the  mark  of  aristocratic 
conspiracy.  He  was  scarcely  dead  when  the  oligarchy 
which  crowned  him  was  for  a  moment  overthrown  by  a 
revolution,  caused  apparently  by  the  dislocation  of  estates 
which  followed  the  rupture  of  the  kingdoms  in  a  baronage 
holding  English  as  well  as  Scotch  fiefs,  combined  with  the 
general  spirit  of  anarchy  and  rapine,  and  the  country  for 
a  time  weltered  in  confusion.  The  barons  retained  the 
worst  privileges  of  feudalism.  They  had  heritable  juris- 
dictions with  power,  in  their  baronies,  of  life  and  death. 
The  great  offices  of  state  were  hereditary,  and  so  were 
the  wardenships  or  commands  on  the  border.  A  baron 
had  absolute  control  over  his  vassals  and  could  always 
lead  them  against  the  crown.  Hoyal  or  national  justice 
was  hardly  known.  It  could  be  enforced  on  the  border 
only  by  calling  out  the  force  of  several  shires.  The  instru- 
ments of  high  police  were  letters  of  fire  and  sword.  Under 

404 


CHAP,  xx  JAMES  I  405 

such  conditions,  as  the  Scotch  historian  says,  burgher  and 
peasant  alike  suffered.  "  The  voice  of  the  country's 
wretchedness  is  heard  in  the  chronicles,  which  lament  that 
justice  and  mercy  are  unknown  throughout  the  land,  that 
the  strong  tyrannize  and  the  weak  endure."  Against 
the  crown  and  each  other  nobles  were  always  forming 
cabals,  or  "  bands  of  manrent."  Private  war  was  the 
rule.  The  most  powerful  of  the  houses  was  that  of 
Douglas,  though  Hamilton,  Graham,  Boyd,  Crichton,  and 
Livingston  had  their  hour.  The  domains  of  the  Doug- 
lases were  in  the  south,  where  the  martial  spirit  was  kept 
up  by  border  wars.  Their  grim  and  massive  stronghold, 
the  sea-girt  Tantallon,  bespoke  the  character  of  an  iron 
race.  For  a  time  that  house  overtopped  the  crown, 
against  which  it  could  combine  almost  half  the  kingdom. 
One  king  could  rid  himself  of  its  mastery  only  by  playing 
the  assassin.  He  entertained  the  Douglas  at  a  feast,  drew 
him  aside,  bade  him  break  up  his  "  band,"  and  when  the 
Douglas  replied  he  would  not,  said,  "  I  shall,"  and  1452 
plunged  a  knife  into  his  heart.  On  the  other  hand,  when 
a  king,  recoiling  from  the  rude  domination  of  the  nobles, 
found  favourites  in  another  class,  the  nobles  seized  his 
favourites  and  hanged  them  before  his  eyes.  Archibald 
Douglas  won  the  nickname  of  "  Bell-the-Cat,"  by  being 
the  leader  in  this  outrage.  To  take  up  arms  against  the 
king  was  a  venial  offence.  To  seize  him  and  carry  him 
off  was  one  of  the  strokes  of  intrigue.  Of  six  successive 
kings,  from  Robert  III.  to  James  VI.,  two  were  murdered 
and  one  died  of  the  chagrin  brought  on  by  treason,  while 
two  fell  in  battle  or  siege.  The  long  minorities  which 
ensued  were  periods  of  redoubled  confusion.  Among 
themselves  the  noble  houses  carried  on  deadly  feuds  which 


406  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

descended  from  generation  to  generation,  and  bred  trage- 
dies rivalling  that  of  the  Tower  of  Ugolino.  To  weaken 
the  nobility,  the  kings  fomented  these  feuds. 

James  I.  of  Scotland  had  passed  his  youth  as  a  captive 
in  England  during  the  Lancastrian  era.  He  had  been 
well  educated  by  the  care  of  the  English  kings.  He  had 

1424  seen  comparative  civilization,  and  on  his  return  to  Scot- 
land tried  to  introduce  it  there.  He  partly  remodelled 
the  Scotch  parliament  on  the  English  pattern,  introducing 
the  principle  of  representation,  to  admit  the  gentry,  who 
formed  the  sinews  of  the  English  House  of  Commons. 
Through  this  parliament  he  opened  the  statute  book  of 
Scotland,  revised  the  law,  made  a  survey  of  property  for 
taxation,  regulated  weights  and  measures,  reformed  the 
coinage,  repressed  vagrancy,  and  made  war  on  feudal 
privilege.  He  cut  off  some  high  rebellious  heads,  and 
resumed  lands  of  which  the  nobles  had  despoiled  the 
crown.  The  consequence  of  his  reforms  was  one  of  the 
grand  murder  scenes  of  history.  In  a  monastery  at  Perth, 
where  the  court  lodged,  as  the  king  lingered  in  his  night- 
gear  before  the  fire,  his  ear  caught  the  noise  of  assailants 
breaking  into  the  building.  All  other  outlets  being 
closed,  he  tore  up  the  floor  of  the  room  and  took  refuge  in 
a  drain  beneath  it,  while  the  women,  whom  alone  he  had 

1436  around  him,  feebly  barred  the  door.  He  was  discovered 
by  the  murderers  and  slain.  To  the  people  he  had  made 
himself  dear  as  their  shield  against  feudal  oppression,  and 
their  affection  was  shown  by  the  execution  of  the  mur- 
derers with  fiendish  refinements  of  torture.  His  son, 
James  II.,  took  up  his  policy,  and  was  making  some  way 

1460   with  it  when  he  was  killed  by  the  bursting  of  a  cannon. 

A  parliament  Scotland  had,  composed  of  the  nobility, 


xx  JAMES  I  407 

the  hierarchy,  the  lesser  barons  or  the  gentry,  and  the 
burghers.  But  in  spite  of  the  transient  reforms  of  James 
I.  it  remained  comparatively  undeveloped,  if  not  abortive. 
It  was  not  divided  into  houses.  It  gave  up  the  initiative 
of  legislation  to  a  committee  called  the  Lords  of  Articles, 
practically  controlled  by  the  crown,  of  whose  edicts  it 
became  little  more  than  the  register.  It  lacked  the  great 
engine  of  influence  possessed  by  the  parliament  of  Eng- 
land, as  the  kings  rarely  came  to  it  for  supplies ;  they 
subsisted  mainly,  as  a  rule,  upon  the  estates  of  the  crown, 
which  they  augmented,  when  they  had  an  opportunity,  by 
confiscation.  Nor  did  the  nobles  look  for  redress  of  griev- 
ances to  parliament.  They  looked  to  their  bands  of  man- 
rent  and  their  swords.  The  development  of  the  judiciary, 
as  an  organ  separate  from  the  legislature,  was  imperfect, 
nor  was  there  a  Habeas  Corpus  to  guard  personal  liberty, 
while  torture,  illegally  practised  by  the  Tudors  in  Eng- 
land, was  in  Scotland  sanctioned  by  law. 

The  normal  relation  with  England  was  war,  only  sus- 
pended by  ill-kept  truce  or  uneasy  and  querulous  peace. 
Scotch  borderers  were  always  issuing  from  their  peels,  or 
towers,  to  raid  on  English  fields.  English  kings  swept 
Scotland  with  desolating  invasions,  sometimes  reviving 
the  claim  to  over-lordship,  but  were  withheld  from 
permanent  conquest  either  by  the  difficulty  of  keeping 
feudal  armies  long  in  the  field,  or  by  their  continental 
enterprises  and  entanglements.  In  the  great  battles  the 
English  bow,  which  the  Scotch  never  learned  to  use, 
prevailed.  Halidon,  Homildon,  Nevill's  Cross,  Flodden, 
all  went  the  same  way.  After  the  slaughter  of  the 
Scotch  king  and  his  nobility  at  Flodden  the  kingdom  1513 
would  probably  have  fallen  had  Surrey's  victorious  army 


408  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

advanced,  instead  of  dispersing  for  want  of  supplies.  But 
in  marauding  expeditions  the  Scotch,  mounted  on  their 
hardy  ponies,  with  a  bag  of  oatmeal  apiece  for  com- 
missariat, had  their  revenge.  War  was  carried  on  with 
the  utmost  savagery,  and  when  the  English  entered  a 
camp  which  the  Scotch  had  left  they  found  a  number  of 
English  prisoners  with  their  legs  broken.  The  border, 
with  its  robber  hordes  and  its  plundering  clans,  was 
a  realm  of  brigandage  tempered  by  fitful  inroads  of 
authority  and  summary  hangings,  styled  Jedburgh  law. 
Pretenders  to  the  English  crown,  the  false  Richard  II., 
and  after  him  Perkin  Warbeck,  found  shelter  and  coun- 
tenance in  Scotland. 

For  protection  against  England,  Scotland  was  fain  to 
throw  herself  into  the  arms  of  France,  of  which  she 
became  the  diplomatic  vassal,  and  in  war  with  the  com- 
mon enemy  the  subordinate  ally.  Scotch  auxiliaries 
fought  for  France  against  the  English  invader,  and  fought 
well.  Louis  XI.  had  his  Scotch  guard,  as  readers  of 
"  Quentin  Durward  "  know.  It  was  in  a  French  quarrel, 
and  in  response  to  an  appeal  made  to  his  fantastic  chivalry 
by  a  French  queen,  that  James  IV.  recklessly  invaded 
1513  England,  and  led  the  flower  of  his  kingdom  to  ruin  at 
Flodden.  The  two  countries  entered  into  a  league  for 
mutual  support  against  England,  which  in  fact  afforded 
the  English  government  a  standing  cause  of  war.  French 
auxiliaries  were  sent  to  Scotland,  but  the  Scotch  found 
them  too  fine  gentlemen,  while  they  found  the  Scotch  not 
fine  gentlemen  enough.  The  Scotch  castles  and  Scotch 
architecture  of  the  period  generally  are  in  the  French  style. 

Under  such  conditions  the  arts  of  peace  could  hardly 
exist ;  wealth  could  not  increase  ;  large  towns  could  not 


xx  JAMES   I  409 

grow  ;  nor  could  the  political  influence  of  the  city  be  felt. 
Such  cities  as  there  were  preferred  municipal  isolation  or 
combination  with  the  other  cities  to  partnership  in  the 
feudal  commonwealth.  It  is  surprising  that  the  country 
should  even  have  been  regularly  tilled,  when  flight  be- 
fore a  devastating  invader  was  a  common  incident  of 
life.  A  combative  and  sombre  patriotism  with  fierce 
hatred  of  the '  auld  enemy  '  would  be  nursed  by  the  conflict. 
Self-reliance  must  have  been  bred  by  the  constant  bearing 
of  arms,  and  danger  of  enervation  by  luxury  there  could 
have  been  none.  But  the  modern  Scotch  character  is  not 
the  offspring  of  feudal  anarchy  or  border  war ;  it  is  the 
offspring  of  protestantism,  of  Presbyterianism,  of  the 
school  system,  and,  not  least,  of  trade,  acting,  no  doubt, 
on  a  basis  of  native  force  and  shrewdness.  Bacon,  in  his 
plea  for  union,  comparing  the  Scotch  with  the  English, 
says  that  the  disparity  is  only  in  the  external  goods  of 
fortune,  that  in  the  goods  of  mind  and  body  Scotchmen 
and  Englishmen  were  the  same,  and  that  the  Scotch  were 
a  people  "in  their  capacities  and  understandings  ingen- 
ious," and  "  in  labour  industrious,"  as  well  as  "  in  courage 
reliant,"  and  "in  body  hard,  active,  and  comely."  But 
Bacon  was  writing  after  the  Reformation. 

The  medieval  church  of  Scotland  could  not  fail  to  par- 
take of  the  general  rudeness  and  coarseness  of  society. 
It  is  wonderful  that  any  rose  should  have  blossomed  on 
such  a  thorn,  and  that  church  art  should  have  produced 
such  beauty  as  that  of  Glasgow  Cathedral,  Melrose  Abbey, 
and  the  Chapel  of  Rosslyn.  It  is  not  less  wonderful  that 
universities  should  have  been  founded,  and  that  there 
should  have  been,  as  apparently  there  was,  a  popular 
craving  for  education. 


410  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

Such  was  the  Lowland  monarchy  ;  and  that  to  the  Low- 
lands, not  to  the  Highlands  and  the  Isles,  the  legal  and 
titular  sovereignty  should  belong,  fortune  decided  on  the 

1411  battle-field  of  Harlaw.  But  the  realm  of  the  Celt  beyond 
the  Grampians  remained  unassimilated  and  unsubdued. 
There  the  clan  system  with  all  its  relations  and  sentiments 
continued  in  full  force,  and  the  chief,  instead  of  being, 
like  the  baron,  lord  of  the  land,  was  lord  of  the  men  to 
whom  as  a  clan  the  land  belonged.  There  Gaelic  was  still 
the  tongue ;  the  Celtic  mantle  was  still  the  garb  ;  the  word 
of  a  lawless  chief  was  still  the  law ;  and  the  most  honour- 
able occupation  was  raiding  on  Lowland  farms.  Chris- 
tianity could  hardly  be  said  to  exist,  and  the  restraints  of 
marriage  were  almost  unknown.  Only  by  alliance  with 
the  powers  of  Huntley,  in  the  eastern  Highlands,  and  of 
Argyle,  in  the  west,  could  the  monarchy  of  Edinburgh 
obtain  slight  and  precarious  control.  Between  Lowland 
Saxon  and  Highland  Celt  the  antipathy  and  antagonism 
were  hardly  less  than  between  the  English  colonist  in 
Ireland  and  the  native  Irish.  "  Gate  ran  "  was  the  name  of 
hatred  and  contempt  given  by  the  Lowlander  to  the  plun- 
dering Gael.  For  the  suppression  of  caterans  a  statute 

1384  was  made  by  which  any  man  might  seize  one  of  them, 
bring  him  to  the  sheriff,  and  kill  him  if  he  refused  to 
come ;  and  this  was  the  first  in  a  train  of  penal  and 
denunciatory  laws  against  the  Highlander,  each  more 
cruel  than  the  last.  The  caterans,  like  the  Irish  kerne, 
retaliated  when  they  had  the  power.  Driven  from  the 
fruitful  to  the  barren  lands,  they  were  shut  out  from  civili- 
zation and  almost  constrained  to  plunder.  The  enmity 
between  the  two  races  was  deadly ;  there  was  apparently 
no  hope  of  reconciliation,  much  less  of  a  common  nation- 


xx  JAMES   I  411 

ality.  In  Scotland  as  in  Ireland  there  was  as  little 
thought  of  keeping  faith  with  the  Celt  as  with  the  beast 
of  prey  lured  into  the  trap.  To  foment  quarrels  between 
clans -was  the  policy  of  the  government,  which  took  a 
dramatic  form  in  the  combat  of  Highlanders  before  the  1396 
king  on  the  North  Inch  of  Perth. 

Henry  VII.,  as   might   have   been   expected   from  his 
character,  dealt  with  the  Scotch  question  in  the  spirit  of    1509 
cool  diplomacy,  and  he  was  in   a   fair    way    to   success. 
Henry  VIII.  in   dealing  with   it  gave  way  to  arrogant    1547" 
passion.     The  marriage  at  last  projected  between  his  son 
and  the  heiress  of  Scotland  seemed  likely  to   do  what 
might   have   been    done  by  the   marriage  of  the  heir  of 
Edward    I.   with    the    Maid   of   Norway.     But   the   rash 
attempt  of  the  Protector,  Somerset,  to  enforce  the  nuptials, 
while  it  brought  him  the  laurels  of  Pinkie  Cleugh,  was    1547 
the  ruin  of  his  policy,  and  made  over  the  hand  of  Mary 
queen  of  Scots  to  France.     Critics  of  the  policy  of  Edward 
I.  say  that  the  two  nations  were  not  then  ripe  for  union. 
Were  they  riper  after  centuries  of  war,  mutual  devasta- 
tion, and  ever-deepening  hate  ? 

Then  came  the  Reformation  and  changed  all.  In  Scot- 
land too  a  religion  of  sacraments  and  ritual  had  degener- 
ated into  a  soulless  formalism,  and  the  magic  means  of 
salvation  were  bought  and  sold.  In  Scotland  too  the 
scandalous  wealth  of  a  torpid  establishment,  the  world- 
liness  and  greed  of  the  clergy,  called  aloud  for  reform. 
In  Scotland  too  vice  had  entered  with  indolence  into  the 
monastery,  and  nature  had  avenged  herself  on  the  enforcers 
of  priestly  celibacy  by  substituting  the  concubine  for  the 
wife.  Clerical  abuses  in  a  rude  society,  if  not  greater, 
were  probably  coarser  and  more  repulsive  than  in  Eng- 


412  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

land.  The  people  thirsted  for  a  purer  and  more  living 
faith,  and  thirsted  for  it  probably  all  the  more  because 
their  worldly  estate  was  poor.  The  suffering  of  protestant 
martyrs,  who  were  the  offspring  of  English  Lollardism, 
and  of  whom  Wishart  was  the  chief,  had  stirred  the 
popular  heart.  Meanwhile  a  rapacious  aristocracy  thirsted 
for  the  spoils  of  the  church.  Scotch  nobles  had  not 
failed  to  lay  to  heart  the  example  set  them  by  Henry  VIII. 
and  his  partners  in  confiscation.  Reform  found  a  supreme 

1572~  leader  and  organizer  in  John  Knox,  a  man  of  extraordinary 
force  and  dauntless  courage,  a  thorough-going  disciple  of 
Calvin  and  sworn  foe  of  everything  papal,  a  modern 
counterpart  of  the  Hebrew  prophet  who  put  to  death  the 
prophets  of  Baal.  Knox  had  opened  his  career  as  an 

1546  accomplice  after  the  fact  in  the  slaying  of  Cardinal  Beaton, 
the  chief  of  the  idolaters  and  the  murderer  of  the  saints. 
In  Scotland  there  was  no  despotic  Henry  VIII.  to  curb 
and  attenuate  the  protestant  movement.  The  young  queen 

1560~  was  awav  in  France,  and  a  foreign  woman,  Mary  of  Guise, 
held  the  reins  of  government  as  regent  with  a  weak  hand. 
Nor  was  there  in  Scotland  a  conservative  middle  class  to 
temper  the  force  of  any  revolution.  The  Reformation 
was  carried  at  once  to  its  full  length  by  a  fervid,  fierce, 
and  impetuous  people.  The  whole  catholic  system,  with 

1560  its  hierarchy  and  priesthood,  its  sacraments,  its  confes- 
sional, its  penance  and  absolution,  its  saint-worship,  its 
purgatory,  its   priestly  synods   and  ecclesiastical   courts, 
was  swept  away.     If  bishoprics  were  retained  it  was  only 
that  their  holders  might  make  over   their   lands   to   the 
nobles.     The  place  of  Catholicism  was  taken  by  Calvinism, 

1561  organized  by  Knox,  with  its  democratic  church  assemblies, 
its  preachings  instead  of  the  Mass,  its  austere  simplicity 


xx  JAMES  I  413 

of  worship,  its  rigid  Sabbatarianism  instead  of  festivals 
and  Lent.  Iconoclasm  wrecked  the  monasteries  and  swept 
the  churches.  The  beautiful  cathedral  of  Glasgow,  the 
pride  of  her  burghers,  narrowly  escaped.  The  Lords  of 
the  Congregation,  as  the  nobles  who  supported  the  revo- 
lution styled  themselves,  lent  their  hearty  support  to 
thorough-going  changes  in  religion.  But  when  it  was 
proposed  to  transfer  the  wealth  of  the  old  church  to  the 
new  ministry,  they  waved  the  proposal  aside  as  a  devout 
imagination,  and,  in  the  words  of  Knox,  kept  two-thirds 
of  the  fund  for  the  devil  while  the  other  third  was  shared 
between  the  devil  and  God.  The  protestant  ministers 
faced  their  poverty  heroically,  and  perhaps  it  was  their 
spiritual  salvation.  After  some  shif tings  and  oscillations, 
caused  mainly  by  struggles  for  authority  between  the 
ministry  and  the  lay  powers,  Scotland,  under  the  guise 
of  a  monarchy,  settled  down  into  an  aristocratic  republic 
with  a  strong  theocratic  tinge.  If  the  ministers  could 
have  had  their  way  it  would  have  been  a  theocracy  indeed, 
the  church  would  have  been  beyond  the  control  of  the 
civil  power,  and  its  presbytery  would  have  exercised  over 
life  and  conscience  an  authority  not  less  than  that  of  the 
priest,  and  socially  perhaps  even  more  oppressive.  Scot- 
land would  have  been  a  counterpart  of  Geneva  under 
the  dictatorship  of  Calvin.  Scotch  religion,  however,  was 
popular  in  its  character.  It  admitted  the  laity  to  a  share 
in  church  government,  though  in  a  way  which  identified 
them  with  the  clergy.  It  recognized  the  priesthood  of  the 
head  of  the  family,  as  we  see  it  in  "  The  Cotter's  Saturday 
Night."  It  was  an  Old  Testament  religion,  with  the 
stern  righteousness  of  the  Old  Testament,  an  Old  Testa- 
ment Sabbath  in  place  of  the  Roman  calendar,  Old 


414  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

Testament  hatred  of  idolatry,  with  which  popery  was 
identified,  and  Old  Testament  tyrannicide.  From  the 
Old  Testament,  too,  came  the  belief  in  witchcraft,  and  the 
mania  for  witch-hunting  which  prevailed  to  a  hideous 
extent.  To  the  catholic  cathedral,  or  church,  with  its 
poetry  in  stone,  succeeded  the  bare  preaching-house ;  for 
the  poetry  of  the  catholic  ritual  popular  psalmody  was  the 
only  substitute.  The  result  was  a  national  character, 
austere,  sombre,  strenuous  in  upholding  its  right. 

Of  liberty  of  opinion  there  was  little  more  than  there 
had  been  under  the  old  church.  Presbyterianism,  like 
episcopacy,  proclaimed  itself  manifestly  divine,  and  called 
upon  the  civil  magistrate  to  give  effect  to  its  excommuni- 
cations and  to  punish  disbelief.  Catholicism  was  perse- 
cuted in  its  turn ;  the  celebration  of  the  Mass  was  made 
penal ;  for  the  third  offence  the  penalty  was  death.  Still 
an  open  Bible  was  an  advance  on  papal  or  priestly  infalli- 
bility, and  education,  which,  as  necessary  to  the  reading 
of  the  Bible,  Presbyterianism  strenuously  fostered,  was 
enlightenment.  The  life  of  the  Scotch  nation,  even  its 
political  life,  henceforth  found  an  organ  more  in  the 
assemblages  of  the  church,  where  the  people  were  repre- 
sented, than  in  the  parliament,  where  the  aristocracy  bore 
sway. 

The  relations  of  Scotland  to  England,  her  ancient  enemy, 
on  one  hand,  and  France,  her  ancient  ally,  on  the  other, 
were  at  once  changed  by  sympathy  with  English  protes- 
tantism and  antagonism  to  French  popery,  represented 
first  by  the  French  regent,  Mary  of  Guise,  and  afterwards 
by  the  queen  her  daughter,  a  widow  of  France.  There 
is  henceforth  a  strong  English  party  in  Scotland,  headed 
by  Knox,  whose  feelings  towards  France  had  not  been 


xx  JAMES   I  415 

sweetened  by  his  experience  as  a  prisoner  in  the  French 
galleys.  Hard  pressed  by  the  regent  and  her  French 
soldiery,  the  Scotch  reformers  welcomed  the  sight  of  an 
English  fleet.  With  England,  they  thrilled  with  horror 
at  the  massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew,  and  held  their  forces 
in  readiness  to  encounter  the  Spaniard  if  he  landed  from 
the  Armada.  They  proposed  a  Scottish  husband  for 
Elizabeth  in  the  person  of  the  Earl  of  Arran,  and  a  union 
of  the  nations.  '  This,'  they  said,  '  would  be  the  surest 
bond  of  alliance  ;  other  devices  might  seem  probable  for  a 
time,  but  they  feared  not  for  long ;  this  would  remove  all 
doubt  for  ever.  England  need  fear  no  loss  of  her  pre- 
eminence. The  laws  of  Scotland  were  derived  from  those 
of  England  and  of  one  fashion.  Ireland  might  then  be 
reformed,  and  the  queen  of  England  might  become  the 
queen  of  the  seas,  and  establish  an  ocean  monarchy  divided 
from  the  rest  of  the  world.'  As  to  the  laws,  strictly 
speaking,  they  were  somewha^.  astray,  the  law  of  Scotland 
being  more  Roman,  while  that  of  England  was  more 
feudal ;  but  as  to  political  character  and  the  general 
tendency  to  free  institutions,  they  said  aright. 

There  follows  a  diplomatic  struggle  for  ascendancy  in 
Scotland,  carried  on  through  a  series  of  years  between  the 
English  on  one  side,  and  the  French  interest,  which  is  that 
of  the  catholic  reaction  and  the  house  of  Guise,  on  the 
other.  Among  the  Scotch  politicians  there  is  much  of 
faction,  family  enmity,  personal  ambition,  and  rapacity, 
though  the  mask  of  religion  is  worn,  and  conspirators 
include  the  security  of  the  reformed  church  among  the 
professed  objects  of  a  political  murder.  The  most  conspic- 
uous figures  are  Murray,  Mary's  half-brother,  a  somewhat 
enigmatic  character,  by  some  thought  as  honest  as  he  cer- 


416  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CIIAI-. 

tainly  was  sage,  who  heads  the  protestant  and  English 
party ;  Kirkaldy  of  Grange,  at  one  time  chivalrous  and 
loyal,  though  he  ended  not  so  well  ;  and  Maitland  of 
Lethington,  a  subtle  and  restless  intelligence,  master  of 
all  statecraft  that  could  be  learnt  from  books.  On  the 
part  of  England,  the  policy  of  the  wise  counsellors  of 
Elizabeth  is  curiously  crossed  by  the  waywardness  and 
duplicity  of  their  mistress,  her  feminine  jealousy  of  the 
queen  of  Scots,  on  one  hand,  and  her  unwillingness  to 
support  subjects  against  their  sovereign  on  the  other. 
For  some  time  the  great  question  is  Mary's  marriage. 
Elizabeth,  in  a  moment  of  strange  caprice  or  self-deceit, 
offers  to  her  rival  her  own  Leicester.  Mary,  though  a 
pupil  of  the  polished  and  wicked  court  of  France,  is  a 
devout  catholic,  and  keeps  up  a  close  correspondence  with 
Rome,  her  relatives  the  Guises,  and  the  king  of  Spain. 
The  rude  remonstrances  and  homilies  of  Knox  could  only 
deepen  her  hatred  of  the  Kirk,  and  denunciations  by  the 
populace  of  what  they  styled  her  idolatry  would  have  the 
same  effect.  But  she  had  been  trained  to  dissimulation, 
and  she  dissembled  her  hatred  of  the  reformed  religion, 
biding  her  time  for  its  overthrow  and  the  re-establishment 
of  the  true  faith.  Her  time  might  have  come.  The  fire 
of  the  Reformation  had  begun  to  cool ;  for  iconoclasm 
there  was  no  more  food ;  the  nobles  cared  only  for  a  quiet 
title  to  their  church  lands,  for  which  they  would  probably 
have  sold  their  national  religion,  as  their  fellows  did  in 
England ;  and  the  queen,  young,  beautiful,  spirited,  and 
enchanting,  was  beginning  to  win  the  heart  of  her  people. 
But  love  ruined  Mary's  game  and  that  of  her  patrons,  by 
throwing  her  into  the  arms  of  Darnley,  a  handsome,  fool- 
ish, worthless  youth,  and  a  catholic.  There  followed  dark 


xx  JAMES   1  417 

conspiracies     among    the    nobles ;    the    murder,   first    of 
Rizzio,  the  secret  minister  of  the  queen  in  her  intrigues    1566 
with  the  catholic  powers,  by  Darnley  and  those  who  had 
made  a   jealous   boy  their  tool ;    afterwards  of  Darnley 
himself,  most  likely  with  the  complicity  of   the  queen.    1557 
Then  came  the  scandalous  marriage  with  Bothwell,  the    156? 
rebellion,  the   imprisonment   at  Lochleven,  the   resigna- 
tion of  the  crown,  the  escape,  the  overthrow  of  Mary's 
cause  at  Langside,  her  flight  to  England,  and  the  tragedy    1568 
with  which  it  closed.     It  is  needless  to  say  that  when  the    1587 
question  of  deposing  her  was  mooted,  the  Hebrew  theo- 
crats  of  the  Kirk  eagerly  pronounced  sentence  on  a  mur- 
deress and  adulteress.     Could  they  have  had  their  own 
way  she  would  have  met  the  fate  of  Jezebel. 

The  reign  of  James  himself  in  Scotland  had  been  a 
minority  of  disorder,  followed  by  the  sway  of  a  vicious 
favourite  and  by  a  series  of  cabals,  conspiracies,  judicial 
murders,  and  private  wars,  in  which  no  respect  was 
shown  for  the  royal  person. 

The  crowns  were  now  united.  Philosophic  statesman- 
ship in  the  person  of  Bacon  desired  a  closer  union,  and 
the  king  had  largeness  of  mind  enough  to  enter  into 
Bacon's  views.  Without  an  incorporating  union  it  was 
certain  that  the  lesser  kingdom  would  be  a  satrapy. 
But  national  prejudice  on  both  sides,  especially  on  the 
side  of  England,  after  centuries  of  enmity  and  frequent 
warfare,  was  still  too  strong.  Enactments  directly  hostile 
were  repealed,  and  the  judges,  making  law,  decided  that 
natives  of  Scotland  born  since  the  king's  accession  were 
not  aliens  in  England.  No  more  for  the  present  could 
high  statesmanship  attain. 

In   Ireland  the   hideous  struggle   between    the   native 


418  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

barbarian  and  the  half-civilized  invader  had  gone  on  for 
four  centuries  with  the  usual  horrors  of  such  struggles. 
To  the  war  of  races  the  Reformation,  by  turning  the  in- 
vaders protestant,  had  added  a  war  of  religion.  Ireland 
had  been  drawn  into  the  vortex  of  the  great  European 
struggle  between  the  two  creeds.  Spain,  to  which  she 
looked  across  the  Bay  of  Biscay,  had  marked  in  her  a 
point  of  vantage  for  attack  on  England.  More  than  once 
Spanish  troops  had  landed  on  the  Irish  coast.  At  Smer- 
1580  wick  a  body  of  them  had  surrendered  to  the  Lord  Deputy 
Grey,  Spenser's  "  Artegal,"  and  had  been  put  to  the 
sword  in  cold  blood  with  a  ruthlessness  which  rivalled 
Alva  or  Parma.  This  had  lent  a  spur  to  English  con- 
quest, which  had  been  pressed  forward  during  the  reign 
of  Elizabeth  with  the  steady  aim  and  centralized  power  of 
the  Tudor  monarchy,  but  with  forces  stinted  by  the  de- 
mands of  the  continental  conflict  and  by  the  parsimony  of 
the  queen.  Nothing  could  exceed  the  atrocities  of  the 
perennial  struggle,  in  which  the  natives  were  treated  by 
the  invaders  as  vermin  to  be  extirpated,  any  means  being 
lawful  for  their  destruction.  From  the  Pale,  the  narrow 
sphere  of  their  dominion,  as  from  a  citadel,  the  deputies 
swept  the  country  with  periodical  hostings  or  raids,  leav- 
ing in  their  track  desolation,  famine,  corpses  rotting  on  the 
ground,  and  wretches  feeding  on  human  flesh.  While 
the  eagles  of  adventure  took  wing  for  the  Spanish  main, 
the  vultures  swooped  on  Ireland  and  fleshed  their  beaks 
in  her  vitals.  The  septs  meantime  in  themselves  advanced 
not  beyond  their  tribal  state.  They  showed  no  tendency 
to  coalesce  into  a  nation.  While  the  invader  was  warring 
on  them  all,  they  continued  to  war  upon  each  other,  and 
it  was  doubtful  whether,  had  the  invader  not  been  there, 


xx  JAMES   I  410 

much  less  desolation  and  barbarism  would  have  been  pro- 
duced by  tribal  feuds.  Nor  were  the  tyranny  and  the 
lawless  exactions  of  the  chiefs,  with  their  robber  bands 
of  gallowglasses,  less  oppressive  probably  than  those  of 
the  conqueror,  or  their  bearing  towards  dependents  less 
insolent  than  his.  The  great  chiefs  had  assumed  a  char- 
acter between  tribal  chieftainry  and  feudal  lordship,  and 
perhaps  worse  for  the  people  than  either,  saving  that  in 
the  relation  to  the  chief  something  might  remain  of  the 
clan  sentiment  to  which  there  was  no  counterpart  in  the 
case  of  the  feudal  lord.  Common  ownership  of  the  land 
had  become  little  more  than  an  idea,  though  an  idea  still 
cherished  in  the  native  mind.  Savages,  or  little  better 
than  savages,  economically,  socially,  and  morally,  the  tribes 
at  all  events,  remained.  Marriage  was  scarcely  held 
sacred  among  them.  The  common,  or  rather  insecure, 
ownership  of  land,  which  is  part  of  the  tribal  system,  was 
fatal  in  Ireland,  as  it  has  been  elsewhere,  to  agriculture, 
to  which,  moreover,  the  climate  was  unpropitious,  being 
generally  far  more  suited  to  pasture  than  to  the  raising  of 
grain. 

The  importation  of  protestantism  in  its  Tudor  form 
into  Ireland  was  a  total  failure.  Against  protestantism 
of  the  more  enthusiastic  kind  the  heart  of  the  Celt  is  not 
closed.  In  the  Highlands  of  Scotland  he  is  a  fervid 
Presbyterian ;  in  Wales  a  fervid  Methodist.  Even  in 
Ireland  ardent  preaching  has  been  known  to  win  him. 
But  the  Tudor  compromise,  with  its  politic  coldness  and 
formality,  suited  him  not.  Besides,  it  was  the  religion  of 
the  invader,  and  its  liturgy  was  in  an  alien  tongue.  Nor 
was  the  Anglican  church  in  Ireland  missionary  in  its 
early,  any  more  than  in  its  later,  day.  It  was  a  church 


420  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

of  English  ascendancy,  of  political  party,  of  persecution, 
and  of  plunder.  An  archbishop  of  Cashel  held,  in  addi- 
tion to  his  archbishopric,  three  bishoprics  and  seventy- 
seven  benefices.  Simony  as  well  as  pluralism  Avas  rampant. 
Patrons  put  horseboys  into  benefices  and  themselves  took 
the  income.  Churches  by  scores  lay  in  ruins.  The  only 
propagandism  which  the  Anglican  hierarchy  in  Ireland 
attempted  was  that  of  intolerant  legislation  which,  being 
feebly  carried  into  effect,  but  embittered  hatred.  The 
Irish  Celt  clung  more  than  ever  to  his  own  religion  and 
to  his  connection  with  Rome,  while  the  catholic  priest- 
hood became  rude  tribunes  of  the  people,  and  natural 
enemies  of  the  government. 

At  last  the  sword  of  comparative  civilization  prevailed. 

1599  The  Lord  Deputy  Mountjoy  hit  upon  the  true  military 
policy,  which  was  not  that  of  raids,  but  that  of  bridling 
each  district  with  a  permanent  fort.  The  last  great 
chiefs,  after  making  their  submission,  bearing  English 
titles  as  earls  of  Tyrone  and  Tyrconnel,  and  being  en- 
listed as  auxiliaries  of  the  government,  found  that  English 
law  encroached  on  their  rude  domination,  flung  off  their 
earldoms,  returned  to  their  Irishry,  rebelled  or  conspired, 
were  driven  into  exile,  and  forfeited  their  lands.  At  the 
same  time  a  better  and  more  statesmanlike  spirit  began 
to  prevail  among  the  conquerors.  Its  highest  representa- 

1604  tives  were  the  Lord  Deputy,  Sir  Arthur  Chichester,  and 
the  lawyer,  Sir  John  Davies,  author  of  a  famous  treatise 
on  Irish  government.  These  men  addressed  themselves 
to  the  work  of  civilization,  backed  by  the  English  govern- 
ment with  good  will,  though  with  imperfect  light.  The 
process  was  now  completed  of  turning  the  land  of  Ire- 
land legally  from  tribal  into  shire-land,  with  individual 


xx  JAMES   I  421 

instead  of  tribal  ownership  and  security  of  tenure,  under 
the  rules  of  the  English  law,  which,  though  themselves 
half-feudal  and  somewhat  barbarous,  were  yet  propitious 
to  agriculture  compared  with  the  tribal  system.  The 
people  were  all  solemnly  assured  for  the  future  of  free- 
dom from  the  insolence  and  exaction  of  the  chiefs,  of  the 
impartial  care  of  the  government,  and  of  equality  before 
the  law.  In  the  words  of  the  Lord  Deputy's  proclama- 
tion, "Every  Irishman,  his  wife,  and  his  children,  were 
thenceforth  the  free,  natural,  and  immediate  subjects  of 
his  majesty,  and  not  to  be  reputed  the  natives,  or  serfs,  of 
any  other  lord  or  chieftain,  and  were  to  understand  that 
his  majesty  could  and  would  make  the  meanest  of  his 
subjects  who  deserved  it  by  his  loyalty  and  virtue  as 
great  and  mighty  a  person  as  the  best  and  chiefest  of  the 
lords."  The  Celt  feels  the  benefit  of  good  government  as 
well  as  the  Teuton,  albeit  he  may  not  be  quite  so  capable 
of  giving  it  to  himself,  and  he  appreciates  justice  like 
other  men.  We  are  told  that  the  Irish  welcomed  the 
happy  change  and  flocked  to  the  courts  where  impartial 
justice  was  administered,  though  optimists  may  have 
taken  for  grateful  enthusiasm  that  which  was  little  more 
than  gregarious  curiosity.  Davies  tells  us  that  the  wild 
inhabitants  wondered  as  much  to  see  the  king's  deputy  as 
Virgil's  ghosts  wondered  to  see  ^Eneas  alive  in  hell.  To 
extend  parliamentary  institutions  to  Celtic  Ireland,  just 
emerging  from  tribalism,  was  an  undertaking  the  arduous 
character  of  which  was  less  apparent  to  the  statesmen  of 
those  days  than  it  is  to  us  who  understand  diversities  of 
national  character  and  stages  of  political  development. 
The  necessity  of  preserving  English  and  protestant  as- 
cendancy, however,  was  felt,  and  the  representation  was 


422  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

duly  manipulated  for  that  purpose.  When  the  first  par- 
1613  liament  of  all  Ireland  met  at  Dublin  there  was  a  division 
on  the  election  of  the  speaker.  The  majority  went  out 
into  the  lobby.  The  minority,  remaining  in  the  House, 
elected  its  man,  and  seated  him  in  the  chair.  The  major- 
ity on  its  return  seated  its  man  in  the  other  man's  lap. 
It  is  easy  to  deride  the  ignorance  of  political  philosophy 
betrayed  in  thrusting  representative  institutions  on  a  race 
unparliamentary  by  nature  and  destitute  of  political  train- 
ing. It  is  easy  to  declaim  about  adapting  institutions  to 
national  feelings  and  character.  It  is  not  so  easy  to  say 
precisely  what  ought  to  have  been  done.  Civilization 
could  not  be  grafted  on  tribalism ;  nor  was  any  attempt 
made  to  graft  it  on  tribalism  in  the  case  either  of  the 
Scotch  or  the  Welsh  Celt.  Perhaps  the  rule  of  a  just 
and  sympathetic  despot,  like  Chichester,  with  law  officers 
like  Sir  John  Davies,  would  have  been  best,  at  least  till 
the  apparition  of  order  and  justice  had  become  less  strange 
in  Ireland  than  the  apparition  of  JEneas  in  the  realm  of 
ghosts. 

The  flight  and  attainder  of  the  rebel  earls,  and  the  sup- 
pression of  the  subsequent  rebellion  of  O'Dogherty  had 
1611  been  followed  by  a  great  forfeiture  of  lands  in  Ulster  to 
the  crown.  This  violated  the  notion  that  the  land  be- 
longed not  to  the  chief,  but  to  the  sept,  which  was  still 
ingrained  in  the  Irish  heart,  though  it  appears  that,  in 
fact,  the  joint  ownership,  like  the  practice  of  annual  re- 
division,  had  become  a  thing  of  the  past,  and  had  been 
superseded  by  a  virtual  lordship  of  the  chief.  It  is  not 
probable  that  mere  forfeiture  would  have  produced  any 
great  shock.  It  was  otherwise  when  the  forfeited  land 
was  colonized  or  "  planted,"  as  the  phrase  then  was,  with 


xx  JAMES   J  423 

English  and  Scotch,  while  the  native  Irish  were  driven 
out  to  make  room,  or  reduced  to  the  condition  of  Gibeon- 
ites  under  the  stranger.  This,  which  amounted  to  the 
creation  of  another  Pale,  seems  to  some  to  have  been  a 
fatal  error  and  the  main  source  of  the  calamities  which 
followed  ;  though  it  is  not  denied  that  industry  both  agri- 
cultural and  textile  came  into  Ulster  with  the  colony, 
nor  can  the  statesmen  of  that  time  be  much  blamed  for 
thinking  that  the  readiest  mode  of  teaching  the  people 
the  arts  of  life  was  the  exhibition  of  this  practical  exam- 
ple. A  more  palpable  error  was  the  persecution  of  the 
native  religion,  which  inevitably  made  the  priest,  who  had 
the  key  to  the  hearts  of  the  people,  a  conspirator  against 
the  government.  The  excellent  and  sensible  Chichester 
left  to  himself  would  have  abjured  persecution.  Anxious 
as  he  was  for  the  introduction  of  protestantism,  his  policy 
would  have  been  that  of  a  missionary  church.  But  the 
state  bishops  insisted  on  legal  compulsion  and  they  pre- 
vailed, with  the  government  in  England.  On  every  side 
we  are  met  by  the  consequences  of  the  union  of  the 
church  with  the  state,  and  the  entanglement  of  the  real 
duty  of  government  with  its  supposed  duty  of  maintain- 
ing and  enforcing  the  true  religion. 

The  European  struggle  between  protestantism  and 
Catholicism  is  now  far  advanced  and  the  outlines  of  the 
final  partition  begin  to  appear.  The  Teuton  as  a  rule  is 
protestant.  He  is  strong-minded  and  seeks,  not  like  the 
southern  son  of  the  Renaissance,  beauty,  but  the  truth. 
If  he  remains  a  catholic,  it  is  under  special  influence,  as 
the  four  mountain  Cantons  of  Switzerland  are  secured  to 
the  ancient  faith  by  their  isolation,  their  simplicity,  and 


424  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

their  jealousy  of  protestant  Berne  ;  or  as  part  of  Germany 
is  kept  catholic  by  the  power  of  princes,  some  of  them 
ecclesiastical,  supported  by  the  Empire  in  the  hands  of 
the  catholic  house  of  Austria,  which  will  presently  crush 
protestantism  in  its  hereditary  domain.  The  intrigue  of 
the  Jesuit,  creeping  to  the  ear  of  kings  or  their  favourites, 
getting  the  education  of  the  rich  into  his  hands  by  his 
mastery  of  classical  culture  and  polite  accomplishments, 
winning  spiritual  dictatorship  by  bis  skill  as  a  confessor 
and  pliancy  as  a  casuist,  has  everywhere  seconded,  per- 
haps more  than  seconded,  the  catholic  sword.  Rome, 
too,  has  been  shamed  and  frightened  into  reform  ;  has 
purged  herself  of  some  at  least  of  her  scandals ;  has 
called  again  upon  the  religious  enthusiasm  of  her  chil- 
dren ;  has  produced  Carlo  Borromeo,  St.  Francis  de  Sales, 
Xavier,  St.  Theresa.  In  Spain  the  Reformation  has  been 
utterly  extinguished  by  the  Inquisition,  whose  success  is 
a  black  testimony  to  the  policy  of  thorough-going  perse- 
cution. In  France  the  Catholic  League,  with  Spain  at  its 
back,  has  been  beaten,  and  the  ex-Huguenot,  Henry  IV., 
is  king.  But  he  has  paid  for  his  kingdom  with  a 
Mass,  which,  all  securities  for  Huguenot  privilege  not- 
withstanding, will  prove  the  surrender  of  his  cause,  and, 
when  bigotry  has  mounted  the  French  throne,  the  death 
of  his  religion.  Italy,  always  the  land,  not  of  the  Re- 
formation, but  the  Renaissance,  the  fiery  life  of  her  muni- 
cipal republics  now  extinct,  the  voices  of  Savonarola  and 
Giordano  Bruno  silenced  by  the  papal  executioner,  is 
sinking  beneath  papal,  Medicean,  or  Spanish  rule  into  a 
long  sleep  of  voluptuous  slavery  with  dreams  of  art. 
Holland,  freed  by  a  struggle  unsurpassed  in  history  for 
heroism  from  Spanish  rule,  is  protestant  and  the  foremost 


xx  JAMES   I  425 

of  thoroughly  protestant  powers ;  while,  thanks  to  the 
fatal  strategy  of  Parma,  the  Teutons  of  Flanders  as  well 
as  the  Walloons  have  fallen  back  under  the  Spanish  and 
papal  yoke.  Protestant  are  the  Scandinavian  kingdoms  ; 
the  Teutons  of  Germany,  where  they  are  not  controlled 
by  catholic  princes  ;  Berne  and  other  Teutonic  Cantons 
of  Switzerland,  the  land  of  Zwingli.  Intensely  protes- 
tant are  the  people  of  Teutonic  Scotland.  In  Slavonic 
Bohemia,  the  land  of  Huss  and  Ziska,  the  great  cup  of 
Utraquism  still  surmounts  the  churches ;  protestantism 
still  reigns  in  the  hearts  of  the  people  and  animates  a 
fierce  nobility  in  the  struggle  for  its  privileges  against  the 
Imperial  house  of  which  the  kingdom  of  Bohemia  has 
become  an  appanage  ;  but  the  Jesuit  is  at  work.  This  is 
the  crater  from  which  will  presently  burst  the  last  great 
eruption  of  the  fires  of  religious  revolution.  Destruction 
of  the  false  religion,  with  its  idols  and  its  scandals,  which 
was  the  easiest  part  of  the  work,  protestantism  has  done ; 
the  reconstruction  of  true  religion  is  harder ;  the  zeal  of 
iconoclasm  is  becoming  spent ;  the  catholic  church  offers 
certainty  and  unity,  powerful  attractions  then  as  now  to 
all  but  the  strongest  minds. 

The  council  of  Trent  has  stereotyped  Roman  catholi-    1545- 

J  1563 

cism  in  its  modern  form,  the  Roman  Catholicism  of  Loyola, 

Suarez,  and  the  tinsel  Jesuit  fane,  not  of  Anselm  or 
Thomas  Aquinas,  and  the  Gothic  cathedral.  It  has  drawn 
between  the  Tridentine  faith  and  protestantism  an  impas- 
sable line.  Rome  has  repudiated  the  cardinal  doctrine 
of  protestantism,  justification  by  faith.  All  attempts 
at  reunion  or  compromise,  such  as  the  gentle  spirits  of 
Contarini,  Pole,  and  Erasmus  made,  are  at  an  end.  The  re- 
ligious confederation  of  Christendom  is  broken  up  for  ever. 


426  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

Spain  is  still  in  the  eyes  of  protestants  the  great  catholic 
power  and  the  arch  enemy  of  light  and  truth.  But  her 
strength  has  been  sapped  by  despotism,  the  Inquisition, 
the  diversion  of  energy  from  industry  to  empire,  the  drain 
of  widely  extended  empire  itself,  monarchism  with  men- 
dicity in  its  train,  the  absorption  of  wealth  by  the  church, 
social  pride  which  despised  labour,  and  a  false  commercial 
system.  She  is  an  enfeebled  colossus  fast  sinking  into 
decrepitude.  Little  remains  of  her  once  towering  might 
but  her  highly  trained  infantry,  which  will  hold  the  field 
1643  till  it  is  destroyed  at  Rocroy.  She  is  propped,  however, 
for  the  present,  by  her  connection  with  the  Empire,  held 
by  the  other  branch  of  her  royal  house.  France  is  the 
rising  power.  She  will  soon  come  into  the  hands  of 
Richelieu,  who  will  quell  her  anarchical  aristocracy,  put 
an  end  by  a  policy  of  toleration  to  her  domestic  wars  of 
religion,  make  her  a  centralized  monarchy,  and  in  her 
turn  the  terror  and  tyrant  of  the  world.  To  Spain  she 
is  now  a  rival  and  hostile  power.  Thus  the  house  of 
Catholicism  is  divided  against  itself.  But  the  house  of 
protestantism  is  also  divided  against  itself  by  dissensions 
between  hostile  sects,  the  Lutheran  and  the  Calvinist,  to 
which  the  exercise  of  private  judgment,  untempered  by 
tolerance,  has  inevitably  given  birth ;  while  the  national 
church  of  England,  wavering  in  its  character,  stands  apart 
from  the  rest  of  the  Christian  world. 

Religious  zeal  begins  to  cool;  policy  among  the  masters 
of  the  world  is  gaining  ascendancy  as  a  motive  power 
over  religion;  the  era  is  one  of  transition  from  religious 
to  political  and  territorial  war.  Henry  IV.  of  France  is 
above  all  things  a  politician,  and  his  victory  is  for  the 
time  that  of  national  interest  over  that  of  faction.  Riche- 


xx  JAMES  427 

lieu's  test  will  be  loyalty,  not  orthodoxy;  cardinal  though 
he  is,  he  will  let  you  go  to  Mass  or  to  preaching  as  you 
please,  provided  you  obey  him  and  the  king.  He  sees  in 
Spain  not  the  bulwark  of  the  true  faith,  but  the  power 
which  stands  in  the  way  of  French  aggrandizement.  He 
will  not  scruple  to  support  protestants  against  the  catholic 
house  of  Austria.  Heresy  is  beginning  to  be  persecuted 
less  as  theological  error  than  as  political  disturbance. 
The  settlement  of  Germany  on  the  principle  that  the 
religion  of  each  state  is  to  be  determined  by  its  own 
government  betrays  a  subsidence  of  the  uncompromising 
struggle  for  truth. 

As  a  rule,  Catholicism  and  despotism,  protestantism  and 
political  freedom  go  together.  Holland  and  Switzerland 
are  republics,  though  Holland  has  in  the  Stadtholderate 
vested  in  the  House  of  Orange  a  popular  monarchy  in 
reserve  which  she  calls  to  the  front  when  public  danger 
demands  a  chief.  Scotland  is  almost  an  aristocratic 
republic.  In  the  protestant  countries  generally  the  ten- 
dency appears,  and  will  in  the  end,  though  perhaps  after 
the  lapse  of  centuries,  prevail. 

England  had  been  confirmed  in  protestantism  by  her 
conflict  with  Spain  and  the  Jesuits.  The  most  vigorous 
and  progressive  element  in  her  above  all  is  protestant  to 
the  core.  The  catholics  are  still  numerous,  and  count 
among  them  some  of  the  nobility  ;  but  they  are  prostrate, 
and  here,  where  they  are  weak,  they  are  suffering  under 
the  persecution  which  they  inflict  wherever  they  are 
strong.  In  the  constitution  and  liturgy  of  the  Anglican 
church,  however,  a  germ  of  reaction  is  left.  The  epis- 
copate remains  and  is  hierarchical,  though  for  some  time 
in  doctrine  Calvinist.  The  religion  of  compromise  which 


428  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

Elizabeth's  government  had  framed  for  the  nation  might 
have  worked  well  and  proved  a  triumph  of  statesmanship 
if  in  religious  belief,  as  well  as  in  politics,  compromise 
had  place.  It  might  hold  in  a  time  of  suspended  thought, 
while  the  soul  of  the  nation  was  in  the  struggle  with  foes 
abroad.  But  when  in  each  of  the  two  sections  life  awoke, 
the  Puritan  parted  company  with  the  Anglo-Catholic,  and 
a  fight  between  them  for  the  national  church  began.  By 
the  primates  Whitgift  and  Bancroft,  especially  by  Ban- 
croft, to  whom  modern  high  churchmanship  looks  back  as 
its  historic  leader,  the  crozier  was  uplifted  once  more. 
Sacerdotalism,  sacramentalism,  and  ritualism  began  to 
creep  back  under  the  cover  of  ambiguous  formularies  and 
names.  Calvinism,  which  makes  the  relation  between 
God  and  each  man  direct,  began  to  give  way  to  Arminian- 
ism  or  the  doctrine  of  free-will,  which  lets  in  the  media- 

1507"  tion  of  the  church.  Hooker,  in  his  famous  treatise,  gave 
Anglicanism  a  body,  and  a  body  highly  attractive  to 
liberal  and  cultivated  minds.  If  in  the  "Ecclesiastical 
Polity"  high  churchmanship  is  not  directly  preached,  it  is 
with  all  the  more  subtle  potency  instilled,  as  in  our  day 

1863  Keble  felt  when,  as  an  apostle  of  Neo-Catholicism,  he 
re-edited  Hooker.  The  forms  of  the  churches  them- 
selves made  and  have  continued  in  our  own  day  to  make 
for  the  high  church  party.  They  were  built  for  sacra- 
mental worship ;  while  the  charm  of  their  medieval 
beauty  lures  to  the  ancient  faith.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  Puritan,  offended  and  alarmed  by  the  revival  of  hie- 
rarchy and  ritual,  recoiled  further  than  ever  from  Cath- 
olicism and  insisted  that  the  church  should  be  cleansed 
of  its  last  traces.  Identifying  Arminianism  with  Cathol- 
icism he  became  more  intensely  Calvinist  than  ever,  and 


xx  JAMES  I  429 

more  than  ever  insisted  on  the  directness  of  the  relation 
between  God  and  the  individual  man.  The  catholics  had 
on  their  side  tradition,  order  and  reverence.  The  Puritan 
had  his  open  Bible  and,  within  biblical  limits,  his  alle- 
giance to  the  sovereignty  of  truth. 

Political  party,  if  it  was  not  identical  with  religious 
party,  followed  largely  the  same  lines.  Severed  from  the 
Roman  centre  of  ecclesiastical  authority,  the  Anglican 
priesthood  had  no  support  but  the  throne,  to  which  it 
clung  with  a  loyalty  often  servile,  giving  to  the  king,  as 
its  head,  in  fact,  more  than  a  catholic  in  the  middle  ages 
would  have  given  to  the  pope.  Jesuitism,  with  a  centre 
of  support  above  monarchies,  had  preached  tyrannicide  ; 
Anglicanism,  having  no  centre  of  support  but  the  mon- 
archy, preached  passive  obedience  and  divine  right. 
Loyalty,  more  than  anything  taught  in  the  Gospel,  became 
its  special  mark.  The  king  on  his  part  was  not  less 
strongly  drawn  towards  a  church  which  upheld  his  abso- 
lute sovereignty  and  almost  his  divinity,  of  which  he  was 
the  head,  the  bishops  of  which  were  his  creatures,  and 
whose  pulpits,  organs  of  opinion  before  the  existence  of 
a  press,  he  could  tune  to  any  air  that  he  pleased.  The 
Puritan,  independent  in  spirit  and  a  rebel  against  ecclesi- 
astical authority,  was  inclined  to  republicanism  veiled  in 
constitutional  drapery,  sometimes  even  to  republicanism 
unveiled. 

Monarchy  in  England  was  parliamentary  and  protes- 
tant.  Yet  it  failed  not  to  feel  its  natural  bias  towards 
the  absolutism  of  surrounding  royalties,  and,  though  less 
consciously,  towards  the  religion  of  kings.  Pride  made 
it  scorn  to  be  less  than  the  mate  of  the  monarchies  of 
France  and  Spain.  But  its  official  protestantism  severed 


430  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

it  from  the  catholic  group,  deprived  it  of  the  sympathy 
and  support  of  its  fellows,  and,  conflicting  with  its  latent 
tendencies  to  Catholicism,  made  its  foreign  policy  fatally 
incongruous,  variable,  and  weak. 

The  hour  has  come  of  a  decisive  struggle  between  the 
crown  and  the  House  of  Commons  for  the  sovereign  power, 
which  must  rest  somewhere,  and,  however  it  may  be  self- 
regulated  and  self-qontrolled  in  its  action,  cannot  really 
be  divided.  In  theory  the  crown  is  sovereign.  "  This,  the 
Commons,  in  language  always  fervently  loyal,  admit,  and 
the  kings,  when  they  insist  on  their  sovereignty,  are  en- 
titled to  the  benefit  of  the  admission.  It  was  the  leader 
of  the  opposition  who  said  that  parliament  was  the  body, 
the  king  the  spirit,  the  breath  of  their  nostrils,  and  the 
bond  by  which  they  were  tied  together.  But  practically 
the  House  of  Commons  is  laying  its  hands  upon  supreme 
power.  Its  engine  is  command  of  the  supplies,  without 
which,  the  domains  of  the  crown  and  its  sources  of  reve- 
nue other  than  parliamentary  taxation  having  been  re- 
duced, while  the  expenditure  has  been  greatly  increased, 
government  cannot  be  carried  on. 

The  House  of  Commons  has  by  this  time  thoroughly 
awakened  from  its  Tudor  trance.  It  represents  a  landed 
proprietary,  reinforced  by  purchasers  of  the  dispersed 
church  estates,  and  including  a  large  number  of  freehold 
yeomen,  together  with  the  chief  burghers  of  the  towns, 
in  whose  hands  the  borough  elections  mainly  are.  The 
labouring  masses  are  unrepresented,  but  the  House 
roughly  represents  the  enfranchised  and  political  na- 
tion. If  local  magnates  exert  a  commanding  influence  in 
elections,  even  for  boroughs,  they  must  in  some  measure 


xx  JAMES   I  431 

consult  the  wishes  of  constituencies  so  sturdy  and  strong. 
The  House  has  studied  its  own  archives  and  learned  what 
its  powers  and  privileges  had  been  under  Lancastrian 
kings.  Among  its  members  are  lawyers  not  a  few,  repre- 
sentatives of  a  powerful  profession,  experts  in  constitu- 
tional as  well  as  in  general  law.  Already  in  Elizabeth's 
reign  it  had  asserted,  and  partly  made  good,  in  spite  of 
the  queen's  jealousy  and  rebukes,  its  right  of  dealing  with 
the  highest  questions  both  of  state  and  church.  The  queen, 
who  would  gladly  have  ruled  without  it,  and  strove  by 
parsimony  to  keep  herself  independent  of  its  grants,  was 
compelled  by  her  perils  to  lean  upon  it,  and  to  fence  with 
its  growing  pretensions  rather  than  to  put  them  down. 
It  has  acquired  a  certain  degree  of  corporate  consciousness 
and  persistency  of  aim.  It  is  rinding  regular  leaders  de- 
voted to  parliamentary  life  and  qualified  to  wrestle  with 
the  ministers  of  the  crown,  to  whom  hitherto  statesman- 
ship has  been  confined.  Influence  in  the  elections  to  it 
has  become  a  paramount  object  of  the  crown,  some  of 
whose  ministers,  Bacon  among  the  number,  take  seats  in 
the  Commons  as  managers  for  the  court.  The  petty  1584 
boroughs  which  are  created  as  seats  for  court  nominees, 
and  of  which  in  Cornwall  there  is  a  large  group,  become 
the  parliamentary  nuisance  and  scandal  of  after  times. 

We  must  be  just  to  the  monarchists.  The  government 
of  an  enlightened  and  patriotic  king  might  even  to  a  lib- 
eral mind  seem  better  than  that  of  a  popular  assembly 
convened  at  irregular  intervals,  containing  much  igno- 
rance and  prejudice,  sometimes  largely  composed  of  new 
and  inexperienced  members,  uninstructed  as  yet  by  a 
political  press,  ill-informed  about  foreign  affairs,  apt  to 
be  carried  away  by  sudden  impulse  or  clamour,  and  decid- 


432  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

ing  all  questions  by  a  majority  apt  to  be  factious,  with- 
out the  safeguard  of  personal  responsibility.  The  ideal 
of  Bacon,  the  great  political  philosopher,  as  well  as  the 
great  natural  philosopher  of  the  day,  was  a  patriotic 
monarchy  informed  and  advised  by  a  loyal  parliament, 
with  judges  who  were  not  to  be  the  parliament's  inter- 
preters, but  as  lions  supporting  the  throne.  For  this 
plan  there  might  have  been  something  to  say  if  Bacon 
could  have  named  the  king,  though  to  the  body  of  the 
nation  autocracy,  however  ideal,  denies  political  life. 

Neither  party,  it  must  be  borne  in  mind,  was  free  from 
the  fallacy  of  church  establishment.  Both  alike  believed 
in  the  necessity  of  a  national  church,  in  the  duty  of  the 
subject  to  conform,  and  in  that  of  the  ruler  to  enforce 
conformity.  Political  government  in  the  hands  of  both 
alike  was  entangled  with  the  alien  work  of  regulating 
religious  belief  and  worship.  Both  parties  in  turn  perse- 
cuted, though  in  a  proportion  inverse  to  their  Christian- 
ity, and  with  a  growing  tendency  on  the  part  of  the  more 
Christian  of  the  two  to  toleration  and  ultimately  to  lib- 
erty. Only  on  the  minds  of  a  few  lonely  thinkers  or 
hunted  sectaries  had  the  idea  of  religious  liberty  as  yet 
dawned.  The  Presbyterian,  with  his  Old  Testament 
notions  of  national  orthodoxy  and  with  his  hatred  of 
idolatry,  which  he  imputed  to  the  Roman  catholics,  was 
a  persecutor  second  in  fanaticism  only  to  the  Roman  cath- 
olics themselves.  Cartwright,  the  leading  Presbyterian 
of  Elizabeth's  reign,  was  ready  to  burn  heretics. 

James  I.  of  England  and  VI.  of  Scotland,  set  by  the 
chance  of  hereditary  succession  to  play  the  part  of  king 
at  this  crisis,  is  the  butt  of  history  as  a  learned  fool  fancy- 


xx  JAMES   I  433 

ing  himself  the  Solomon  of  kingcraft.  His  learning, 
which  was  real,  and  which  he  owed  to  the  tuition  of  Bu- 
chanan, did  him  no  harm,  though  he  made  absurd  displays 
of  it,  and  was  not  saved  by  it  from  abject  belief  in  witch- 
craft. It  enabled  him  to  enter  into  the  ideas  of  Bacon. 
Perhaps  its  influence  in  raising  him  above  vulgar  pas- 
sions had  something  to  do  with  the  policy  of  peace,  which 
was  his  best  point  as  a  ruler.  Nor  was  he  by  any  means 
devoid  of  Scotch  shrewdness  or  of  native  humour.  He 
often  said  wise  things,  if  he  seldom  did  them.  He  was 
kind-hearted,  good-tempered,  and,  as  a  private  man, 
would  have  most  likely  shambled  through  life  an  amiable 
though  laughable  pedant.  But  he  was  thoroughly  weak, 
and  destiny  brought  him  to  show  his  weakness  on  a 
throne,  where  it  led  him  into  public  acts  of  folly,  some- 
times into  public  crimes.  He  was  in  his  mother's  womb 
when  Rizzio  was  torn  by  murderers  from  her  arms.  His 
figure  was  unkingly,  his  gait  unsteady,  his  tongue  too 
large  for  his  mouth.  His  Scotch  accent,  which  now 
would  be  not  unpleasing,  then  grated  on  English  ears, 
reminding  a  proud  and  prejudiced  race  that  he  was  a 
stranger.  To  his  natural  grotesqueness  he  added  that  of 
a  dress  ridiculously  stuffed  and  padded.  He  was  awk- 
ward and  ungainly  in  all  that  he  did.  Devoted  to  hunt- 
ing, he  had  a  loose  seat  on  horseback,  and  we  behold  him 
tilted  out  of  his  saddle  into  the  New  River,  with  nothing 
to  be  seen  of  him  but  his  boots.  James  meant  no  evil. 
He  meant  some  good,  and  he  has  had  hard  measure  com- 
pared with  the  strong  and  brilliant  enemies  of  mankind. 
Vanity  was  his  ruling  passion ;  to  display  the  kingcraft 
on  which  he  comically  prided  himself  was  his  great  de- 
light ;  he  was  far  from  being  by  nature  a  tyrant ;  he  had  ' 
VOL.  i  —  28 


434  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

formed  no  deliberate  schemes  of  usurpation ;  probably  he 
doted  on  the  forms  and  names  fully  as  much  as  on  the 
substance  and  the  exercise  of  power. 

For  the  government  of  a  constitutional  kingdom  and  of 
a  race  generally  law-abiding,  James's  training  had  been 
bad.  In  Scotland  he  had  feebly  wrestled  with  the  law- 
less violence  of  the  Scotch  nobles  on  one  hand,  and 
with  the  theocratic  pretensions  of  the  ministry  on  the 
other.  He  had  been  told  when  rude  treatment  had  drawn 
tears  from  his  eyes  that  it  was  better  that  children 
should  weep  than  bearded  men.  He  was  not  likely  to 

1600  forget  the  day  of  the  Gowrie  conspiracy,  on  which,  lured 
by  a  feigned  tale  of  treasure  trove  into  a  lonely  chamber 
of  a  Scotch  nobleman's  castle,  he  found  himself  suddenly 
collared  by  his  host,  and  if  his  cries  had  not  just  in  time 
been  heard,  would  probably  have  been  abducted  if  not 
murdered.  His  ideas  of  justice  were  such  as  prevailed  on 
the  Scotch  border.  On  the  threshold  of  his  new  king- 
dom he  shocked  English  legality  by  ordering  a  cutpurse 
to  be  hanged  without  trial. 

A  fatal  part  of  James's  weakness  was  his  addiction  to 
favourites,  whom  he  chose  for  their  good  looks  and  for 
the  lively  spirits  which  accompany  robustness  and  in 
which  he  was  himself  wanting.  In  Scotland  he  had 
fallen  into  the  arms  of  a  handsome  and  engaging  scoun- 

1580  drel  named  Stewart,  whom  he  made  Earl  of  Arran,  and 
who  disgraced  him  by  rapacity  and  outrage.  In  England 
he  fell  into  the  arms  of  Carr,  a  young  Scotch  adventurer, 

1615  whom  he  made  Earl  of  Somerset,  and  afterwards  of 
Villiers,  a  young  English  adventurer,  who  was  created 
Earl  and  then  Duke  of  Buckingham.  These  youths  he 
•made  not  only  his  companions,  but  his  ministers,  putting 


xx  JAMES   I  435 

his  patronage,  himself,  and  the  state  into  their  hands. 
But  during  the  early  part  of  his  reign  the  king  had  an 
able,  experienced,  and  most  industrious  prime  minister 
in  Robert  Cecil,  Earl  of  Salisbury,  the  second  son  of  jg^~ 
Burghley,  and  a  legacy  from  the  council  of  Elizabeth, 
whose  unremitting  toil,  both  in  diplomacy  and  finance, 
partly  countervailed  the  folly  and  wastefulness  of  the 
court.  A  strange  light  is  thrown  on  the  public  morality 
of  the  age  when  we  find  that  this  conscientious  servant 
of  the  crown,  for  such  he  must  certainly  be  held  to  have 
been,  was  a  secret  pensioner  of  Spain.  When,  worn  out 
by  toil  and  anxiety,  Cecil  died,  the  favourite  reigned  1612 
supreme.  It  was  a  period  at  which  royalty,  no  longer, 
as  in  the  middle  ages,  leading  armies,  toiling  in  council, 
or  administering  justice  in  person,  was  inclined  to  with- 
draw behind  the  curtain  of  its  harem  and  cast  the  burden 
of  government  on  a  vizier.  But  Richelieu  and  Mazarin 
were  statesmen,  and  even  the  Spanish  Lerma,  Olivares, 
and  Lewis  de  Haro  were  statesmen  of  a  lower  kind,  not 
favourites  like  Somerset  or  the  youthful  Buckingham. 

There  was  another  man  at  James's  side,  one  whose  large 
mind  had  formed  plans  for  the  establishment  of  a  mon- 
archy on  a  throne  of  light,  for  the  union  of  Scotland  with 
England,  for  the  civilization  of  Ireland,  for  the  liberal 
reform  of  the  law,  for  the  pacification  of  the  church  by 
a  policy  of  comprehension,  for  the  extension  of  Eng- 
land by  colonization.  He  had  a  king  not  incapable  of 
understanding  him.  What  was  it  that  prevented  Bacon 
from  grasping  power,  that  caused  him  to  be,  as  plainly 
he  was,  somewhat  lightly  esteemed  by  the  masters  of 
the  state,  and  at  last  abandoned  by  them  to  impeach- 
ment and  disgrace?  To  men  of  business  like  Cecil,  he 


436  THE   UNITED  KINGDOM  CHAP. 

probably  seemed  too  much  of  a  philosopher.  But  the 
assiduous  scheming  and  craving  for  court  favour  which 
led  him  to  such  compliances  as  prosecuting  his  benefactor 
Essex,  taking  part  in  the  illegal  torture  of  Peacham,  offer- 
ing the  incense  of  adulation  to  Somerset  and  his  vile  wife, 
and  acting  as  the  king's  tool  in  the  case  of  the  Overbury 
trial,  could  hardly  fail  to  lower  him  even  in  the  eyes  of 
those  to  whom  he  cringed.  He  rose  to  the  highest  place 
in  the  law,  but  instead  of  realizing  his  political  ideal,  and 
being  the  prime  minister  of  a  Solomon,  he  was  condemned 
to  be  a  flatterer  of  James  Stuart  and  the  courtier  of  Somer- 
set and  Buckingham.  Yet  his  political  philosophy  lives. 
It  has  in  it  an  element  which  is  valuable  for  all  times. 

James  had  been  bred  in  Scotland  a  strict  Calvinist  and 
had  written  a  treatise  to  prove  that  the  pope  was  Anti- 
Christ.  But  he  had  been  crossed,  browbeaten,  and  bored 
by  the  theocratic  preachers  of  his  native  land.  They  had 
set  their  spiritual  power  against  his  royalty.  When  he 
questioned  their  authority  at  a  conference,  Melville,  their 
leader,  seized  him  by  the  sleeve  and,  calling  him  "  God's 
silly  vassal,"  told  him  that  there  were  two  kings  and  two 
kingdoms  in  Scotland,  that  Christ  Jesus  was  a  King,  and 
king  James  was  his  subject,  that  Christ's  kingdom  was 
the  church,  of  which  king  James  was  not  a  king,  nor  a 
lord,  nor  a  head,  but  a  member,  and  that  they  whom 
Christ  had  called  and  commanded  to  watch  over  the 
church  and  govern  that  spiritual  kingdom  had  of  him 
authority  and  power  which  no  Christian  king  or  prince 
could  control,  but  which  it  was  their  duty  to  fortify  and 
assist.  Such  was  the  style  of  these  heroic  but  too  high- 
aspiring  men,  who  demanded  that  the  church,  of  which 
they  were  the  leaders  and  the  soul,  should  be  above 


xx  JAMES    I  437 

secular  law  and  rule  in  all  things  which  they  thought 
fit  to  regard  as  pertaining  not  to  Csesar  but  to  God.  It 
was  papal  theocracy  recurring  in  another  form,  though 
tempered  by  the  democratic  character  of  the  Scotch 
church.  James  had  striven  to  put  the  preachers  down, 
and  had  been  helped  by  the  jealousy  of  the  lay  nobles. 
The  great  fact  that  the  bishop  was  the  only  true  friend  of 
the  king  had  dawned  on  his  philosophic  mind.  "  No  bishop 
no  king,"  was  thenceforward  his  motto.  As  king  of  Eng- 
land he  threw  himself  at  once  into  the  arms  of  the  hier- 
archy. A  deputation  of  the  puritan  clergy  came  to  him 
at  Hampton  Court  with  a  petition  called,  from  the  reputed  1604 
number  of  signatures,  the  Millenary  Petition,  praying  for 
the  abolition  of  forms  and  customs  such  as  the  sign  of  the 
cross  in  baptism,  the  use  of  the  ring  in  marriage,  the  pri- 
vate baptism  of  infants  in  danger  of  death,  the  compulsory 
use  of  the  cap  and  surplice,  and  the  communion  without 
sermon  or  previous  examination,  things  which,  though 
trivial  in  themselves,  they  not  without  reason  regarded 
as  symbols  of  Roman  Catholicism  and  warrants  for  reac- 
tion. They  demanded  also  the  discontinuance  of  lessons 
from  the  Apocrypha,  which  had  no  sanction  but  that  of 
the  church.  They  demanded  liberty  of  work  on  church 
holidays,  and  at  the  same  time  the  strict  observance  of 
what  they  regarded  as  the  Sabbath.  They  demanded  the 
erasure  from  the  liturgy  of  equivocal  terms,  such  as  that 
of  "  priest,"  the  use  of  which  instead  of  the  Gospel  word 
"  presbyter "  has,  in  fact,  produced  momentous  effects. 
The  king,  to  whom  the  very  name  of  presbyter  was  a 
bugbear,  refused  their  prayer  in  terms  grossly  insulting, 
and  was  told  by  the  bishops  that  he  had  spoken  by  the 
inspiration  of  God.  The  primate  fell  on  his  knees  and, 


438  THE   UNITED  KINGDOM  CHAP. 

with  good  reason,  thanked  God  for  having  sent  them  such 
a  king.  James  enforced  strict  conformity,  and  many 
puritan  clergymen  gave  up  their  livings.  Ten  of  those 
who  had  signed  the  Millenary  Petition  were  imprisoned. 
In  justice  let  it  be  remembered  that  the  framers  of  the 
petition  also  insisted  upon  conformity,  and  on  the  sup- 
pression of  opinions  deemed  heresies  by  them.  Neither 
side  was  for  liberty,  though  it  was  from  Puritanism  that 
liberty  had  most  to  hope.  James  afterwards  went  to 
Scotland,  and,  with  the  help  of  an  aristocracy  always 

1617  jealous  of  the  ministers,  restored  episcopacy,  though 
weak  and  unmitred,  there.  Ritual  he  would  fain  have 
restored,  but  the  resistance  was  too  strong.  One  fruit 
the  Hampton  conference  bore.  It  led  to  the  preparation, 

1611  under  the  king's  auspices,  of  that  revised  version  of  the 
Bible,  which,  like  the  dramas  of  Shakespeare,  and  more 
than  Shakespeare's  dramas,  has  united  all  who  speak 
the  English  tongue,  and  by  its  influence  on  character, 
public  as  well  as  private,  claims  a  leading  place,  not  only 
in  religious  and  intellectual,  but  in  political  history. 

If  "  No  bishop  no  king  "  was  henceforth  the  motto  of 
the  monarchy,  the  responsive  motto  of  the  hierarchy  was 

1606  "  No  king  no  bishop."    In  1606  the  clergy  in  convocation 
drew  up  a  set  of  canons  embodying  the  absolutist  creed, 
declaring  the  origin  of  government  patriarchal,  proclaim- 
ing  kingship  with   its   prerogatives  a  birthright,  affirm- 
ing  passive   obedience   to   be   due   in  all  cases,  without 
exception,  to  the  king,  and   pronouncing  anathemas  on 
all    dissenters.      Dr.     Cowell,   an    ecclesiastical    lawyer, 

1607  presently   followed   with   his    law    dictionary,    laying    it 
down  that  the  king,  by  his  absolute   power,   was  above 
the  law  ;    that  if   he  admitted  parliament  to  a  share  in 


xx  JAMES   I  439 

legislation  it  was  of  his  mere  benignity ;  that  he  might 
alter  the  law  at  his  discretion,  and  was  himself  not  bound 
by  it.  That  the  king,  after  granting  the  subject  laws 
and  liberties,  retained  a  reserve  of  absolute  power,  was 
the  fundamental  assumption  of  the  party  of  preroga- 
tive, and,  as  has  been  said,  might  derive  colour  from 
the  form  of  the  Great  Charter,  which  is  a  grant  by  the 
king.  Dr.  Cowell's  manifesto,  however,  raised  a  storm ; 
the  House  of  Commons  took  his  law  dictionary  in  hand,  1610 
and  it  was  suppressed  by  proclamation.  Of  the  high 
church  hierarchs  Andrewes  alone  is  known  to  have  pre- 
served something  of  his  Christian  dignity  and  inde- 
pendence. As  he  and  Bishop  Neile  stood  behind  the 
king's  chair  at  dinner,  James  asked  them  whether  he 
could  not  take  his  subjects'  money  when  he  wanted  it 
without  all  that  formality  in  parliament.  "  God  forbid, 
Sir,  but  you  should,"  said  Neile ;  "  you  are  the  breath 
of  our  nostrils."  Andrewes  replied  at  first  that  he  had 
no  skill  for  parliamentary  cases,  but  being  pressed, 
"  Then,  Sir,"  said  he,  "  I  think  it  lawful  for  you  to 
take  my  brother  Neile's  money,  because  he  offers  it." 

To  the  catholics  James,  in  spite  of  his  an ti -papal 
treatise,  was  inclined  to  show  favour.  It  was  their 
divided  allegiance  rather  than  their  erroneous  faith  that 
he  abhorred.  As  a  candidate  for  the  succession  to  the 
crown  he  had  courted  their  support,  and  even  the  support 
of  their  head,  in  a  way  which  showed  that  he  deemed 
them  powerful  as  a  party.  They  now  lay  under  the 
harrow  of  a  cruel  penal  law.  Celebration  of  the  Mass 
was  death ;  recusancy,  that  is,  failure  to  attend  the 
established  worship,  was  line  and  forfeiture.  James  was 
disposed  to  toleration ;  not  indisposed  even  to  reunion 


440  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

on  certain  terms  with  the  church  which  was  that  of  his 
brother  rnonarchs  and  to  which  his  queen  was  believed 
secretly  to  incline.  The  part  of  mediator  and  peace- 
maker was  always  to  his  mind.  He  cherished  the  fancy 
that  if  he  could  get  rid  of  the  priests  and  the  Jesuits  the 
lay  catholics  would  be  loyal  and  conform.  Of  the  priests 
and  Jesuits  he  never  would  have  got  rid.  In  many  of 
the  old  manor  houses  of  England  there  are  secret  closets 
behind  chimneys  or  movable  panels,  with  concealed  aper- 
,  tures  for  the  introduction  of  food,  in  which  the  priest  or 
Jesuit  once  was  hidden  while  he  stole  from  one  mansion 
to  another  at  the  risk  of  his  life,  celebrating  the  Mass, 
keeping  alive  the  flame  of  catholic  zeal,  and  not  seldom 
weaving  catholic  conspiracy.  Banished  under  whatever 
penalties,  he  would  have  found  his  way  back  into  heretic 
England  in  spite  of  the  gallows  and  the  quartering  knife, 
as  in  heathen  lands  he  found  his  way  to  the  souls  which 
he  wished  to  save  in  spite  of  the  tomahawks  of  the 
Iroquois.  But  James  could  not  enter  on  the  path  of 
concession  without  awakening  the  alarm  and  wrath 
of  a  nation  which  had  learned  to  regard  English  Catholi- 
cism as  the  vanguard  of  its  foreign  enemies,  ever  ready 
to  rise  at  their  call,  and  held  down  only  by  the  penal  law. 
He  was  scared,  too,  by  the  discovery  of  an  abortive  plot 
against  his  succession  to  the  throne  ;  while  his  courtiers, 
if  not  his  own  exchequer,  hungered  for  the  fines.  The 
1604  penal  laws  were  put  in  force,  and  more  than  five  thousand 
convictions  of  recusancy  followed. 

This  increased  the  excitement  among  the  catholics, 
which  the  uncertainties  of  the  succession  to  the  crown 
and  the  gleam  of  hope  for  a  catholic  dynasty  had  bred. 
There  were  two  kinds  of  catholics,  although  the  nation, 


xx  JAMES   I  441 

blind  with  hatred  and  fear,  failed  to  distinguish  them 
from  each  other.  There  were  catholics  of  the  old  school, 
survivors  of  the  church  of  the  middle  ages,  who,  while 
they  clave  to  the  ancient  faith,  were  more  English- 
men than  catholics,  and  had  nobly  shown  it  when  their 
country  was  threatened  by  the  Armada.  Catholicism  of 
this  stamp  lingered  long  in  the  old  families  of  England. 
It  lingered  to  the  day,  midway  in  the  present  century,  on 
which  the  Duke  of  Norfolk,  the  head  of  the  old  catholic 
nobility,  renounced  Roman  Catholicism  in  patriotic  dis-  i851 
gust  at  Papal  Aggression.  But  there  were  catholics  of 
another  school,  like  the  Ultramontanes  of  the  present  day, 
more  papal  than  English,  pupils  of  the  Jesuit,  and  ready 
to  join  the  papal  invader  against  the  country.  Among 
these  was  formed  a  conspiracy  for  blowing  up  the  two 
Houses  of  Parliament,  the  vengeful  memory  of  which,  1605 
reawakened  on  each  Guy  Fawkes'  day  almost  to  our  own 
time,  long  helped  to  put  off  the  liberation  of  the  catholics 
from  the  fetters  of  the  penal  law.  The  desperado  who 
led  the  conspiracy  and  gave  it  his  name  was  a  hero  in  his 
evil  way.  He  kept  his  post  as  watchman  at  the  mine 
even  when  the  secret  had  been  betrayed,  and  he  held  out 
against  the  torture  till  his  frame  had  been  so  shattered 
that  he  could  scarcely  sign  his  name.  One  Jesuit,  Gar- 
nett,  suffered  for  complicity  in  the  plot ;  he  had  the  1606 
Jesuit  treatise  on  equivocation  in  his  hands.  Other 
Jesuits  were  in  the  background.  Unlike  most  of  the 
catholic  plots,  this  was  well  laid.  Nothing  but  the  de- 
sire of  the  conspirators  to  save  the  catholic  lords  who, 
exempted  by  their  rank  from  the  common  lot  of  their 
communion,  retained  their  seats  in  parliament,  averted  a 
catastrophe  which  would  have  ranked  with  the  St.  Bar- 


442  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

tholomew.  The  comrades  of  Guy  Fawkes  lacked  the 
thorough-going  zeal  and  faith  of  that  exterminator  of  the 
Albigenses,  who,  when  heretics  and  catholics  had  become 
indistinguishably  mixed  together,  cried,  "  Kill  them  all 
and  God  will  know  his  own."  Parliament,  however, 
would  have  lived  and  would  have  set  a  son  of  James  upon 
a  fiercely  protestant  throne.  The  immediate  result  would 
probably  have  been  a  massacre  of  the  catholics.  There 
followed  inevitably  a  fierce  renewal  of  panic  hatred  and 

1606  an  increase  of  severity  in  the  application  of  the  penal 
laws.  Now,  too,  to  the  test  of  attendance  at  established 
worship  was  added  that  of  reception  of  the  sacrament  at 
the  hands  of  a  state  clergyman,  a  hideous  profanation  of 
the  rite  of  Christian  love.  As  often  as  the  court  is  sus- 
pected of  lenity  to  Catholicism,  or  of  leaning  towards  it, 
the  cause  of  freedom  is  traduced  and  dishonoured  by  hor- 
rible calls  from  parliament  for  the  execution  of  priests. 
These,  be  it  remembered,  were  the  days,  not  of  the  Pris- 
oner of  the  Vatican,  with  his  spent  thunderbolts  and  his 
harmless  allocutions,  but  of  the  St.  Bartholomew,  the 
Armada,  the  persecution  in  the  Netherlands,  the  assassin- 
ations of  William  the  Silent  and  Henry  IV.,  the  Babing- 
ton  Conspiracy,  and  the  Gunpowder  Plot.  The  assassin- 

1610  ation  of  Henry  IV.,  with  Jesuitism  if  not  Jesuits  again  in 
the  background,  intensified  the  panic  rage  which  the  Gun- 
powder Plot  had  raised.  The  English  catholics  suffered 
in  a  still  further  sharpening  of  the  edge  of  the  penal  laws 
for  the  crimes  of  a  European  party  to  which  only  one  sec- 
tion of  them,  and  that  the  smallest,  really  belonged. 

The  field  of  decisive  battle  for  the  supreme  power  was 
sure  to  be  finance.  Could  the  king  find  means  of  carry- 
ing on  his  government  without  coming  to  parliament  for 


xx  JAMES   I  443 

supplies  ?  If  he  could,  he  was  the  master.  Parliament 
met  only  at  his  pleasure,  and  by  his  will  it  could  at  any 
time  be  dissolved.  The  country  was  at  this  time  prosper- 
ous, its  wealth  was  increasing,  and  there  was  no  danger 
of  general  disaffection.  It  was  barely  possible  that  by 
avoiding  war  and  observing  strict  frugality,  James  might 
have  lived  of  his  own.  He  had  the  estates  of  the  crown 
with  wardships,  escheats,  and  fines,  and  other  non-par- 
liamentary resources,  including  the  sale  of  peerages, 
payments  for  which  were  entered  in  the  books  of  the 
exchequer,  and  of  baronetcies,  a  new  order  of  hereditary  1611 
half-nobility  invented  for  a  financial  purpose.  He  had 
regular  import  duties,  tonnage  and  poundage,  granted 
by  parliament  at  the  commencement  of  each  reign,  and 
the  product  of  which  was  increasing  with  the  trade  of 
the  country.  To  keep  out  of  war  James  was  well  in- 
clined. But  frugal  it  was  not  in  him  to  be.  He  per- 
sisted in  squandering  money  on  plate  and  jewels.  He 
was  too  good-natured  to  say  nay  to  greedy  favourites  and 
courtiers.  He  flung  twenty-thousand  pounds  at  once  to 
Scotch  parasites,  who  as  foreign  interlopers  were  odious 
to  the  nation,  receiving  no  service  in  return.  He  gave 
away  the  estates  of  the  crown,  and  when,  conscious  of  his 
own  weakness,  he  tried  to  tie  his  own  hands  by  entailing 
the  estates,  the  courtiers,  instead  of  asking  for  land,  asked 
for  cash  and  obtained  it.  To  add  to  his  embarrassments 
he  had  inherited  a  debt  from  the  last  reign,  and  in  Eng- 
land funding  was  not  then  known. 

At  least  as  important,  however,  as  political  or  financial 
reform  in  the  eyes  of  the  Commons  was  the  defence  of 
protestantism  in  the  church.  Non-conformity,  such  as 
that  of  the  Brownists,  had  ceased  to  exist  or  was  going 


444  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

into  religious  exile.  The  struggle  was  now  against  clerical 
reaction  and  episcopal  usurpation  within  the  establishment. 
Of  the  House  of  Commons  two-thirds  were  Puritans, 
that  is,  thorough-going  protestants  of  the  Calvinist  per- 
suasion, and  though  not  opposed  to  a  moderate  episcopacy, 
were  suspected  by  the  king  of  Presbyterian  leanings  and 
of  seeking  to  introduce  "their  confused  form  of  polity 
and  parity,  being  ever  discontented  with  the  present 
government  and  impatient  to  suffer  any  superiority,  which 
'  maketh  that  sect  unable  to  be  suffered  in  any  well- 
formed  commonwealth."  The  king  and  the  episcopate, 
as  was  natural,  drew  ever  closer  to  each  other,  the  king 
inclining  to  high  churchmanship,  the  bishops  exalting 
the  prerogative  by  which  their  order  was  upheld  and 
sheltered.  Thus  with  the  struggle  for  political  liberty 
and  self-taxation  was  blended  the  struggle  about  church 
doctrine,  ritual,  and  government.  The  Gunpowder  Plot 
and  the  assassination  of  Henry  IV.  seem  to  have  sickened 
James  of  Catholicism  for  the  time.  Upon  the  death  of 

1610  the  high  church  primate  Bancroft,  he  made  Abbot,  a 
staunch  Calvinist  and  a  rather  narrow  Puritan,  arch- 
bishop. He  seems  indeed  himself  to  have  remained  a 
Calvinist.  In  exercise  of  his  authority  as  head  of  the 
church  he  sent  deputies  to  uphold  Calvinistic  orthodoxy 

1618-  against  the  Arminian  heresy  at  the  Synod  of  Dort.  But 
he  was  thoroughly  convinced  of  the  truth  of  his  own 
doctrine,  "No  bishop  no  king."  His  orthodoxy  he  dis- 
played while  he  fearfully  belied  his  humanity  by  burn- 
ing two  heretics,  against  whose  murder  no  parliamentary 
enemy  of  Rome  or  friend  of  freedom  raised  his  voice. 

The  House  of   Lords  plays  in  some  measure  the   part 
of  a  buffer  between  the  crown  and  the  Commons.     The 


xx  JAMES    I  445 

Lords  are  not,  like  the  Commons,  Puritan.  They  pro- 
pose Sunday  for  a  conference  with  the  Commons,  who 
reply  that  they  cannot  do  business  on  the  Sabbath. 
Among  them  are  some  catholics.  They  are,  of  course, 
not  democratic.  But  they  have  never  recovered  their 
feudal  powers.  They  are  no  longer  territorial  potentates 
or  leaders  of  the  national  force.  They  are  simply  per- 
sons of  quality  with  large  estates,  to  whose  titles  social, 
to  whose  domains  local,  influence  is  attached.  The  crown 
is  the  fountain  of  their  honours.  Some  of  them  have 
paid  round  sums  to  make  the  fountain  flow.  Frequent- 
ing the  court,  they  feel  its  influence.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  secure  possession  of  their  rank,  their  wealth,  and  their 
places  in  parliament,  gives  them  a  large  measure  of  inde- 
pendence. Some  of  the  wealthiest  of  them  are  bound 
to  the  protestarit  cause  by  their  title-deeds,  while,  as 
grandees,  regarding  the  high  places  of  the  state  as  their 
own,  they  all  look  with  jealousy  on  the  ascendancy  of 
ecclesiastics.  The  lords  spiritual  vote  with  the  crown. 

At  the  meeting  of  parliament,  in  1604,  the  king  put  1604 
forward  a  claim  to  having  disputed  returns  decided  not 
by  the  House  but  in  his  court  of  chancery.  This  might 
have  enabled  the  crown,  with  a  servile  chancellor,  to  pack 
parliament.  The  claim  was  resisted  and  the  right  of  the 
House  of  Commons  to  be  judge  of  its  own  election  cases, 
essential  to  its  independence,  was  maintained. 

The  contest  between  the  crown  and  the  Commons 
opened  with  an  attack  of  the  Commons  on  the  abuse  of 
the  feudal  perquisites  of  the  crown,  wardship  and  pur- 
veyance. Wardships  were  obsolete  as  well  as  vexatious. 
Fiefs  being  no  longer  local  offices,  administrative,  mili- 
tary, and  judicial,  but  mere  estates,  there  was  no  longer 


446  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

any  reason  why  this,  more  than  property  of  any  other 
kind,  should  be  taken  into  the  hands  of  the  crown  dur- 
ing the  minority  of  the  heir.  The  monarchy  being  no 
longer  itinerant,  as  in  the  middle  ages,  but  having  a 
fixed  seat  and  constant  access  to  fair  markets,  the  reason 
for  purveyance  as  well  as  that  for  wardship  belonged  to 
the  past.  Both  had  become  instruments  of  royal  extor- 
tion, while  of  the  gains,  in  the  case  of  purveyance  at 
least,  more  went  to  roguish  underlings  than  to  the  king. 
But  the  first  pitched  battle  was  fought  on  the  question 

1610  of  the  Impositions,  that  is,  the  claim  of  the  crown  in 
exercise  of  its  prerogative,  without  the  sanction  of  par- 
liament, to  impose  duties  on  merchandise  brought  into 
the  kingdom.  It  was  on  its  guardianship  of  the  seas, 
certainly  no  superfluous  service  in  those  days,  that  the 
claim  of  the  crown  was  founded.  Bate  was  the  patriot 

1608  who,  by  resisting  an  Imposition  on  his  currants,  played 
the  part  of  a  forerunner  of  Hampden.  The  case  hav- 
ing been  brought  before  the  courts,  the  judges  decided 
in  favour  of  the  crown,  which  continued  to  levy  the  Im- 
positions. Reasons  have  been  given  by  a  high  authority 
for  believing  that  their  judgment  was  not  bad  law,  at 
least  that  they  might  have  believed  it  to  be  good.  The 
question  turned  on  the  construction  of  a  medieval  statute, 
which,  after  the  manner  of  those  times,  redressed  the 
immediate  grievance  without  laying  down  any  broad 
principle.  The  decision  of  the  judges  in  favour  of  an 
arbitrary  impost  was  perhaps  not  so  much  illegal  as  it 
was  unconstitutional,  that  is,  against  the  spirit  of  English 
institutions,  which  condemned  arbitrary  taxation,  and 
counter  to  the  political  progress  of  the  nation. 

In  the  minds  of  the  parties  to  this  controversy,  how- 


xx  JAMES   I  447 

ever,  the  legal  and  the  constitutional  were  much  the 
same.  Both  king  and  Commons  took  their  stand  on  the 
letter  of  the  law.  They  appealed  not  to  the  rights  of 
man  or  any  abstract  principle,  but  to  the  statute  book,  the 
law  reports,  the  note-books  of  the  judges.  The  arsenal 
of  constitutional  patriotism  was  the  library  of  Cotton 
the  antiquarian.  A  member,  perhaps,  says  a  bold  thing 
about  the  elective  origin  of  hereditary  monarchy  and  the 
reciprocal  duties  of  king  and  people,  but  his  words  are 
a  flash  of  rhetoric  in  debate.  There  is  a  suggestion  of 
something  like  the  theory  of  social  contract,  but  no  action 
is  really  founded  on  it.  Early  in  the  reign,  and  again  in  1604 
a  more  memorable  form  towards  the  close,  comes  up  the  1621 
question  whether  the  privileges  of  the  Commons  are  the 
gift  of  the  king  or  their  own  inalienable  heritage.  This 
is  the  nearest  approach  to  an  issue  of  abstract  principle. 
Of  wresting  supreme  power  out  of  the  hands  of  the  king 
and  making  the  government  republican,  the  Commons 
never  dreamed.  They  recognize  in  the  king  "their  sov- 
ereign lord  and  governor,"  while  they  are  in  fact  trans- 
ferring sovereignty  and  supremacy  to  themselves.  It 
has  been  often  and  truly  said  that  this  attachment  to 
legal  precedent  is  the  characteristic  of  the  English  con- 
stitution, and  with  equal  truth  it  is  said  that  it  deserves 
the  praise  bestowed  on  it  only  in  so  far  as  the  reformers 
believed  in  the  intrinsic  wisdom  and  justice  of  the  old 
law.  It  has  the  advantage  of  leading  reformers  to 
content  themselves  with  repairing  their  own  house  and 
letting  their  good  example  do  its  work,  instead  of  under- 
taking to  rebuild  the  world,  and  bringing  on  a  crash  of 
world-wide  ruin  in  the  attempt. 

In  a  political  struggle  which  observed  legal  precedent, 


448  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

great  power  was  given  to  the  judges,  who  became  in  a 
measure  arbiters  of  the  constitution.  The  judges  at  this 
time  were  not  only  appointed  by  the  crown  but  remov- 
able at  its  pleasure,  though  none  of  them  had  been 
removed  for  political  reasons  since  the  beginning  of 
Elizabeth's  reign.  They  were  not  without  a  measure 
of  independence.  They  worshipped  the  common  law. 
They  would  have  regard  for  the  opinion  of  their  pro- 
fession. Perhaps  they  also  felt  the  rising  tide  of  national 
*  opinion.  They  had,  however,  also  a  devout  respect  for 
prerogative  as  a  reserve  power  which,  after  all  grants  of 
liberty  to  the  subject,  remained  inalienably  in  the  crown. 
1610  Cecil's  wisdom  planned  a  contract  between  the  crown 
and  the  nation  under  which  the  crown  would  have  re- 
dressed grievances  by  giving  up  wardships  and  purvey- 
ance, arbitrary  impositions  on  merchandise,  and  other 
vexatious  perquisites,  while  the  nation  would  have  paid 
the  king's  debt  and  assured  him  of  a  sufficient  revenue 
for  the  future.  But  the  scheme  failed,  not  only  because 
it  was  hard  to  agree  about  the  money  terms,  but  because 
the  Commons  persisted  in  including  ecclesiastical  abuses 
among  the  grievances  to  be  redressed.  Entanglement  of 
religion  with  politics  is  the  ever-present  and  ever-perni- 
cious consequence  of  the  identification  of  the  church  with 
the  state. 

The  contract  having  miscarried  and  its  author  being  in 
his  grave,  the  deficit  grew  and  the  financial  embarrass- 
ments of  the  crown  became  desperate.  Sales  of  crown 
lands,  notwithstanding  the  entail,  sales  of  peerages  and 
baronetcies,  exaction  of  the  star  chamber  fines,  payment 
of  an  old  debt  by  France  and  of  war  debts  by  the 
Dutch,  failed  to  fill  the  gulf  in  the  exchequer.  The 


xx  JAMES  I  449 

crown  had  to  go  a-begging,  a  masterful  mendicant,  for 
gifts  and  loans.  Little  was  put  by  an  angry  and  Puri- 
tanical nation  into  the  plate,  and  the  king  was  forced 
again  to  call  a  parliament. 

The  parliamentary  election  of  1614  has  been  noted  1614 
as  a  regular  battle  on  a  great  question  between  govern- 
ment and  opposition.  The  government  exerted  its  in- 
fluence to  the  utmost.  It  had  a  number  of  nomination 
boroughs,  owing  their  existence  to  its  ancient  preroga- 
tive, but  elsewhere  many  of  its  candidates  were  rejected. 
The  electors  asserted  their  independence,  and  the  gov- 
ernment reaped  from  its  attempt  to  control  them  only 
the  odium  of  baffled  interference.  Public  feeling  seems 
partly  to  have  overpowered  even  the  influence  of  the 
local  magnates.  Three  hundred  new  members  were 
elected,  and  it  is  reasonably  conjectured  that  among 
these  were  the  resolute  reformers  of  the  day.  Many 
of  the  number  would  be  country  gentlemen  trained  in 
county  business  and  government.  Among  them  were 
two  men  destined  to  be  memorable  in  different  ways ; 
a  rich  young  Yorkshire  baronet,  Sir  Thomas  Went- 
worth,  afterwards  Lord  Strafford,  and  John  Pym,  a 
Somersetshire  gentleman  who  had  evidently  fitted  him- 
self for  public  life,  and  whose  guiding  principle  was  that 
the  best  form  of  government  is  that  "  which  doth  actuate 
and  dispose  every  part  and  member  of  the  state  to  the 
common  good." 

The  House  of  Commons  showed  its  Puritanism  by 
going  in  a  body  to  receive  the  communion  at  St.  Mar- 
garet's church,  avoiding  Westminster  Abbey  for  fear  of 
"  copes  and  wafer  cakes."  James,  in  the  speech  from 
the  throne,  announced  that  the  parliament  was  to  be  a 

VOL.  i  —  29 


450  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

parliament  of  love,  of  the  king's  love  for  his  subjects  and 
the  love  of  the  subjects  for  their  king.  But  the  morning 
of  love  was  clouded  by  the  angry  question  of  precedence 
between  the  redress  of  grievances  and  supplies.  To  the 
grievance  of  Impositions,  which  did  not  fail  to  reappear, 
was  added  that  of  monopolies  and  that  of  "  undertaking," 
that  is,  conspiring  to  tamper  with  the  independence  of 
members  of  parliament  in  the  interest  of  the  crown.  On 
the  subject  of  the  Impositions  the  Commons  tried  to 
carry  the  Lords  with  them,  and  requested  a  conference 
for  that  purpose.  The  Lords  refused,  though  by  only  a 
majority  of  about  forty  to  thirty,  sixteen  of  the  majority 
being  bishops.  Then  Bishop  Neile,  the  most  hateful  of 
ecclesiastical  sycophants,  brought  on,  by  vilifying  the 
Commons,  a  tornado  from  which  the  government  could 
escape  only  by  dissolution.  Not  a  single  bill  passed  ;  the 
1614  parliament  of  love  ended  as  the  "  Addled  Parliament." 
1614  Again  the  king  had  to  fall  back  upon  benevolences 
wrung  with  difficulty  from  disaffected  hands,  impositions 
on  merchandise,  star  chamber  fines,  sale  of  crown  lands, 
sale  of  patents  of  monopoly,  of  peerages,  of  baronetcies, 
of  offices  of  state  ;  and  still,  with  the  lavishness  of  the 
court  and  the  favourites,  deficits  and  debt  grew. 

The  court  was  recklessly  extravagant,  and  the  courtiers 
emulated  the  king.  The  favourite  freak  of  one  of  them, 
Hay,  was  the  double  supper,  a  sumptuous  array  of  cold 
meats,  whisked  away  and  replaced  by  hot  dishes.  But  to 
waste  was  added  debauchery,  shocking  not  only  to  Puri- 
tan austerity,  which  looked  on  with  angry  eyes,  but  to 
common  morality  and  decency,  if  we  may  trust  a  contem- 
porary picture,  even  with  reasonable  allowance  for  carica- 
ture. Caricature  there  probably  is  in  the  narrative 


xx  JAMES   I  451 

of  a  dramatic  entertainment  at  court,  at  which  ladies, 
personating  the  Virtues,  are  disgustingly  drunk.  If  the 
king  himself  was  free  from  intemperance,  this  did  not 
save  the  credit  of  his  court.  Nor  was  the  venality  of  the 
court  less  notorious  than  its  debauchery.  Everybody  and 
everything  were  for  sale. 

To  debauchery  and  venality  was  added  crime.  There 
had  been  a  child  marriage  arranged  by  family  policy 
between  Lord  Essex,  a  son  of  Elizabeth's  unhappy  favour- 
ite, and  Lady  Frances  Howard.  The  boy  husband  was 
sent  to  travel  on  the  continent.  Meantime  his  girl  wife 
grew  up  into  a  flirt,  and  when  he  returned  to  claim  her 
received  him  with  disgust.  Somerset,  the  king's  Scotch 
favourite,  was  in  love  with  her,  and  to  make  way  for  his 
passion,  her  divorce  from  Essex  was  procured  on  most 
revolting  grounds.  Two  bishops,  the  prime  sycophant 
Neile,  and,  strange  to  say,  the  high-church  saint  Andrewes, 
sullied  themselves  by  complicity  in  a  job  which  filled  pure 
hearts  with  disgust.  Somerset  then  married  the  divorced 
wife,  and  Bacon  stooped  to  court  the  all-powerful  favour-  1613 
ite  by  giving  a  masque  at  the  wedding.  Puritanism  in 
the  person  of  the  old  Archbishop  Abbot  stood  by  and 
frowned  its  protest  against  the  unhallowed  nuptials,  in 
which  the  archbishop  refused  to  take  a  part.  Somerset 
had  a  dependent  and  confidant  in  Sir  Thomas  Overbury, 
an  adventurer  of  some  brilliancy  and  mark.  Overbury 
had  either  opposed  the  marriage  from  fear  of  the  lady's 
influence,  or  in  some  other  way  had  made  Lady  Somerset 
his  enemy.  Through  her  husband,  who  abused  the  royal 
prerogative  for  the  purpose,  Lady  Somerset  got  him  com- 
mitted to  the  Tower,  and  there,  by  her  emissaries,  she  1613 
poisoned  him.  The  murder  came  to  light.  The  terrible 


452  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

chief  justice  Coke  took  the  case  in  hand.  Somerset  and 
his  wife  were  brought  to  trial  before  the  peers  and  found 

1616  guilty,  as  Lady  Somerset  undoubtedly  was,  though  the 
guilt  of  her  husband  was  more  doubtful.  Somerset  before 
his  trial  threatened  the  king  with  the  disclosure  of  a 
secret,  and  the  threat  threw  the  king  into  an  agony  of 
fear.  Bacon,  who,  in  the  pursuit  of  his  lofty  ideal  of 
monarchy,  was  forced  to  stoop  low  in  his  services  to  the 
actual  monarch,  prepared  to  have  Somerset  gagged, 
muffled,  and  carried  out  of  court  if  he  began  to  peach. 
Somerset,  however,  did  not  peach ;  the  secret  remains 
untold  to  this  day ;  but  mystery  gave  scope  for  the  worst 
suspicions.  Lord  and  Lady  Somerset  were  reprieved  and 
at  last  pardoned,  while,  to  illustrate  the  justice  of  the 

1622  day,  the  minor  actors  in  the  tragedy,  not  being  persons 
of  quality,  went  to  the  gallows. 

1615  Somerset  departed  only  to  give  place  to  another 
favourite,  and,  for  the  public  weal,  a  worse.  This  was 
George  Villiers,  soon  created  Duke  of  Buckingham,  a 
youth  commended  to  the  fatuous  king  by  the  same  come- 
liness and  sprightliness  which  had  made  the  fortune  of 
Somerset.  From  a  place  in  the  king's  bed-chamber  he 
leapt  at  once  to  the  height  of  power,  with  the  disposal  of 
all  the  patronage  of  the  crown,  bringing  with  him  a  train 
of  grasping  relatives  and  dependents.  Somerset  had  been 
little  more  than  a  minion.  He  was  greedy  but  not  ambi- 
tious, nor,  except  by  the  scandal  of  his  elevation,  danger- 
ous to  the  state.  He  left  the  administration  pretty  much 
in  the  hands  of  the  trained  officials,  men  of  the  class  of 
Neville,  Winwood,  Wotton,  Lake,  and  Cranfield,  who,  if 
they  were  not  statesmen,  were  administrators,  and  saved 
the  government  from  confusion.  But  Buckingham  was 


xx  JAMES   I  453 

of  a  different  stamp  from  Somerset.  He  was  no  mere 
minion,  but  a  dangerous  man,  brilliant,  ambitious,  vain- 
glorious, impulsive,  and  passionate,  with  just  capacity 
enough  to  go  splendidly  astray,  and  destined  to  guide 
the  monarchy  to  ruin.  His  insolence  went  the  length  of 
telling  an  important  personage  to  his  face  that  he  was 
his  enemy,  and  would  do  him  all  the  harm  he  could. 
The  king  he  treated  with  impudent  familiarity.  His 
influence  over  James  was  unbounded.  It  is  henceforth 
he  who  reigns.  Bacon  once  more  worshipped  the  rising 
sun,  and  tried  to  instil  political  wisdom  into  the  youthful 
master  of  the  state. 

The  king  was  now  preparing  for  himself  a  fresh  cause 
of  unpopularity  and  of  embroilment  with  the  Puritan 
Commons  by  drawing  near,  in  his  foreign  policy,  to 
Spain.  Secretly  and  perhaps  unconsciously  sympathizing 
with  Catholicism,  at  least  in  its  political  aspect,  he  would 
also  be  attracted  by  his  vanity  towards  the  grand  mon- 
archy which  Spain  still  seemed  to  be.  The  thought  of 
a  matrimonial  alliance  was  already  rising  in  his  mind. 
Spain  sent  to  England  as  her  ambassador  a  consummate 
diplomatist,  the  Count  of  Gondomar,  who  could  wind  1617 
James  round  his  finger  and  lacked,  for  complete  success, 
only  the  power  of  understanding  free  institutions  and 
the  character  of  a  free  people.  A  sad  proof  of  Spanish 
influence  was  the  judicial  murder  of  the  last  of  the  Eliza-  1618 
bethan  heroes,  Sir  Walter  Raleigh.  With  Raleigh,  as 
with  the  rest  of  his  group,  enmity  to  Spain  was  a  relig- 
ion. At  the  time  of  the  demise  of  the  crown,  his  restless 
and  scheming  spirit,  it  seems,  had  dallied  with  an  embryo 
plot  for  putting  forward  the  claim  of  Arabella  Stuart, 
whom,  though  she  lacked  primogeniture,  some  preferred 


454  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

as  a  native  of  England  to  James,  who  was  an  alien.  For 
this,  Cecil,  being  his  enemy,  he  had  been  arraigned,  and 

1603  had  been  convicted  on  the  worthless  testimony  of  a  treach- 
erous knave,  after  a  trial  which  exceeded  the  usual  iniquity 
and  brutality  of  state  trials ;  Coke,  the  attorney-general, 
breaking  all  the  laws,  not  only  of  evidence,  but  of  de- 
cency, calling  the  illustrious  accused  a  monster,  a  viper, 
a  spider  of  hell,  and  saying  that  he,  the  life-long  foe  of 
Spain,  had  a  Spanish  heart.  Raleigh's  glory,  however, 
shielded  him  for  a  time,  though,  as  a  restless  schemer 
and  a  reputed  atheist,  he  was  far  from  being  a  public 
favourite.  He  was  reprieved,  and  instead  of  being  sent 
to  the  block  he  was  sent  to  the  Tower,  where  this  eagle 
was  mewed  up  for  twelve  years,  faintly  consoling  himself 
for  the  loss  of  action  and  the  sea  by  writing  history.  At 

1616  last  he  prevailed  upon  James,  by  the  lure  of  gain,  to  let 
him  make  an  expedition  to  a  gold  mine  in  Guiana,  pledg- 
ing himself  not  to  fall  foul  of  the  Spaniards.  Of  the 
Spaniards,  however,  he  did  fall  foul.  On  his  return, 
foiled  and  empty-handed,  Spain  demanded  his  head,  and 
the  wretched  king  yielded  to  her  demand.  Raleigh  was 

1618  beheaded  under  his  old  sentence,  though,  besides  the 
lapse  of  time,  he  had  since  borne  the  commission  of  the 
king.  He  met  death  like  a  man  who  had  fought  the 
Armada,  and  like  one  of  a  group  which  singularly 
blended  culture  and  poetry  with  action.  On  the  night 
before  his  execution  he  wrote  a  poetical  farewell  to 
life:  — 

Even  such  is  time,  that  takes  on  trust 
Our  youth,  our  joys,  our  all  we  have, 

And  pays  us  but  with  age  and  dust; 
Who  in  the  dark  and  silent  grave, 


xx  JAMES   I  455 

When  we  have  wandered  all  our  ways, 
Shuts  up  the  story  of  our  daysl 

But  from  this  earth,  this  grave,  this  dust, 

The  Lord  shall  raise  me  up,  I  trust  1 

These  lines  are  the  death-song  of  the  Elizabethan  era. 
They  ring  down  the  curtain  on  a  memorable  act  in  the 
drama  of  Humanity. 

There  had  been  one  near  the  throne  who  felt  for  the 
hero,  and  who,  when  .the  eagle  was  caged,  longed  to  set  it 
free.  The  only  chance  of  averting,  or  at  least  of  delay- 
ing, the  mortal  duel  between  king  and  parliament  was 
the  accession  of  a  king  like  Edward  I.,  so  formed  by 
nature  that  his  heart  would  beat  in  unison  with  that  of 
his  people  and  his  aims  and  policy  would  be  theirs. 
Prince  Henry,  the  eldest  son  of  James  I.,  seemed  likely 
to  be  such  a  king.  He  was  a  high-spirited  boy,  with 
popular  tastes  and  sympathies.  He  took  a  lively  interest 
in  ships  and  ship-building ;  was  the  darling  and  hope  of 
the  nation,  and,  while  he  lived,  a  safeguard  to  an  unpopu- 
lar throne.  But  he  died  at  nineteen,  and  the  anguish  of  IQ^ 
the  nation  expressed  itself  in  hideous  whispers  of  poison- 
ing by  the  hated  favourite,  or  even  by  the  king.  Henry's 
death  made  way  for  Charles,  whose  name  is  the  knell  of 
doom. 

James  was  not  cruel  by  nature,  rather  he  was  kind ; 
but  suspicion,  perhaps,  since-  the  Gunpowder  Plot  had 
made  him  capable  of  cruelty.  The  manuscript  of  a  sermon 
against  him  and  his  government  was  found  in  the  study 
of  Peacham,  a  minister  in  Somersetshire.  Though  the 
sermon  was  probably  never  intended  for  publication, 
its  luckless  author  was  absurdly  accused  of  compassing 
the  king's  death.  He  was  arrested  and  put  to  the  rack,  1615 


456  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

Bacon  being  present  at  the  process.  When  brought  to 
trial,  he  was,  as  a  matter  of  course,  found  guilty,  and 
escaped  hanging,  drawing,  and  quartering  only  by 
dying  in  prison.  The  reviving  spirit  of  the  House  of 
Commons  had  not  yet  reached  the  juries,  and  in  state 
trials  the  crown  still  enjoyed  almost  a  Tudor  license  of 
iniquity. 

The  next  incident  in  the  battle  of  the  constitution  was 
a  blow  struck  by  the  king  at  the  independence  of  the 
*  judiciary  in  the  person  of  chief  justice  Coke.  This  man, 
who  had  so  basely  and  brutally  served  the  crown  in  the 
1603  trial  of  Raleigh,  was  nevertheless  proud,  intractable,  and 
devoted  with  a  martyr  constancy  to  his  idol,  the  common 
law,  of  the  somewhat  barbarous  learning  of  which  he  was 
a  prodigy,  almost  a  monster.  He  was,  besides,  a  deadly 
enemy  of  Bacon  as  well  as  of  Bacon's  philosophic  juris- 
prudence, and  by  no  means  minded  to  be  a  lion  under 
Solomon's  throne.  His  personal  independence  was  se- 
cured by  a  great  fortune  gained  partly  through  a  wealthy 
marriage,  a  speculation  which,  after  the  death  of  his 
first  wife,  he  repeated  with  calamitous  results.  Side 
by  side  with  the  struggle  for  supremacy  between  the 
king  and  parliament,  and  in  connection  with  the  high 
church  movement,  had  been  going  on  a  contest  between 
the  lay  and  ecclesiastical  courts,  the  ecclesiastical  courts 
striving  to  make  their  jurisdiction  independent  and  to 
regain  their  dominion  over  the  spiritual  realm,  the  lay 
courts  putting  in  their  injunctions  and  strenuously  dis- 
puting the  ground.  The  king  favoured  the  ecclesiastics, 
who  were  on  his  side  and  under  his  control.  Coke  was 
a  resolute  champion  of  the  lay  jurisdiction.  This  first 
brought  him  into  collision  with  the  court.  Afterwards, 


xx  JAMES  I  457 

in  the  Peacham  case,  the  crown,  knowing  that  the  legality 
of  its  course  was  doubtful,  solicited  the  judges  of  the 
king's  bench  to  give  their  opinion  beforehand  on  the 
point  of  law.  Coke  replied  that  such  particular  and 
auricular  taking  of  opinions  was  not  according  to  the  cus- 
tom of  the  realm.  The  dispute  with  Bacon  on  the 
Peacham  case  was  followed  by  a  dispute  with  lord 
chancellor  Ellesmere,  another  enemy  of  Coke,  about  the 
relative  jurisdictions  of  the  common  law  courts  and 
the  court  of  chancery.  The  tendency  of  chancery,  by  a 
more  rational  and  liberal  system,  to  draw  causes  to  itself 
and  carve  out  a  rival  domain,  was  watched  with  jealous 
eyes  by  the  liegemen  of  the  common  law.  Chancery 
being  the  more  cognate  to  prerogative,  the  king  was  with 
his  chancellor  and  against  Coke.  At  last,  in  a  case 
relating  to  a  grant  by  the  crown  of  a  benefice  to  a  bishop 
in  commendam,  the  prerogative  was  put  in  issue.  The  1616 
king  ordered  the  judges  to  stay  proceedings.  At  first  the 
judges,  led  by  Coke,  showed  a  bold  front,  refused  to  take 
legal  notice  of  the  royal  letters  addressed  to  them,  and 
declared  it  their  duty  to  hear  the  cause.  Ultimately,  the 
king  having  browbeaten  them  in  person,  and  the  question 
being  put  to  them,  whether  in  a  case  which  his  majesty 
conceived  to  concern  himself  in  honour  or  profit  they 
would  not,  if  he  desired  to  consult  them,  stay  proceed- 
ings, all  but  Coke  succumbed.  Coke  was  first  sus-  1616 
pended,  then  dismissed,  from  his  office,  and  with  him 
independence  left  the  judgment  seat.  Coke  had  also, 
while  chief  justice,  arrested  an  attempt  of  the  king  to 
usurp  legislative  power  by  means  of  royal  proclamations. 
He  laid  it  down  as  a  principle  that  no  royal  proclamation 
creating  a  new  offence  could  have  the  force  of  law,  though 


458  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

it  might  give  additional  force  to  an  existing  law,  and 
aggravate  an  offender's  guilt.  On  this  occasion  the  chan- 
cellor complained  that  if  the  power  for  the  exercise  of 
which  the  king  contended  were  taken  from  him,  he 
would  be  no  more  than  a  Duke  of  Venice.  The  com- 
parison has  been  revived  in  our  own  day,  and  is  true  to 
the  fact. 

The  attack  on  the  independence  of  the  judiciary  was 
followed  by  an  attack  on  the  independence  of  the  press 
in  the  interest  of  the  king's  clerical  allies.  What  the 
political  and  social  philosophy  of  Montesquieu  or  Rous- 
seau was  to  the  French,  the  immense  erudition  of  John 
Selden,  jurist  and  antiquary,  was  to  the  English  revolu- 
tion. Selden  embodied  that  assertion  of  the  supremacy 
of  the  civil  over  the  ecclesiastical  power  which  was  the 
1618  special  characteristic  of  the  English  Reformation.  He 
wrote  a  treatise  on  the  history  of  tithe,  plainly,  though 
obliquely,  showing  that  it  was  of  human,  not  of  divine 
institution,  and  consequently  subject  to  human  legisla- 
tion. This  was  alarming  to  the  high  church  clergy,  who 
had  too  good  reason  to  know  that  possessions  of  the 
church  subject  to  human  legislation  would  be  precarious. 
Selden  was  summoned  before  the  court  of  high  com- 
mission and  compelled  to  make  what  was  in  fact  a 
degrading  retraction.  The  sale  of  his  book  was  pro- 
hibited, and  when  his  adversaries,  taking  advantage  of 
his  silence,  published  answers  to  him,  he  was  forbidden 
to  reply.  This  was  the  way  to  drive  discontent  inwards 
to  the  vitals  of  the  body  politic,  and  in  the  end  to 
raise  up  Miltons  with  their  Areopagitic  thunder  against 
the  killing  of  a  good  book  as  the  killing  of  reason 
itself. 


xx  JAMES   I  459 

Monopolies  form  the  next  field  of  battle.  Monopolies  1621 
of  foreign  trade  were  not  unreasonable  when  peace  was 
hardly  known  upon  the  sea,  when  piracy  was  rife,  and 
when,  there  being  no  royal  navy,  or  none  effective  for  the 
protection  of  commerce,  a  distant  trade  could  be  carried 
on  only  by  companies  armed  for  their  own  defence.  Of 
monopolies  of  home  manufacture  some  might  be  justified 
as  patents  for  inventions  before  the  introduction  of  a  pat- 
ent law  or  as  control  of  the  materials  of  war.  But  others 
of  the  odious  list  had  been  corruptly  created  in  the  in- 
terest of  the  crown  and  its  favourites,  or  of  jobbers,  of 
whom  Sir  Giles  Mompesson,  Massinger's  "Sir  Giles  Over- 
reach," was  the  hated  chief,  and  were  mere  nuisances  and 
instruments  of  extortion.  From  corrupt  monopolies  the 
attack  extended  to  corruption  in  other  quarters,  and  nota- 
bly in  courts  of  law.  When  peerages  and  offices  of  state 
were  openly  sold.;  when  nothing  was  to  be  done  at  court 
without  a  fee  ;  when  a  minister  of  state  could  coolly  say 
that  an  office  was  worth  so  much  if  the  holder  did  not 
wish  to  go  to  heaven,  and  so  much  less  if  he  did,  the 
judiciary  was  not  likely  to  escape  contagion.  One  result 
of  the  investigation  was  a  memorable  and  tragic  fall. 
After  a  life  of  laborious  climbing,  sometimes  at  the  ex- 
pense of  his  moral  dignity,  Bacon  had  at  length  reached 
the  summit  of  his  ambition  as  a  lawyer,  if  not  as  a  poli- 
tician. His  proudest  day  in  his  own  estimation,  though 
not  in  the  estimation  of  posterity,  was  that  on  which  he 
rode  in  state  to  Westminster  to  be  installed  as  Lord  Keeper,  1618 
with  a  hundred  persons  of  quality  in  his  train.  That  such 
majesty  of  intellect  could  stoop  to  corruption  is  hard  to 
believe,  and  apologists  have  struggled  desperately  against 
the  fact.  But  if  Bacon  was  not  guilty  of  corruption,  he 


460  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

was  guilty  of  the  worse  crime  of  bearing  false  witness 
against  his  own  honour,  for  he  confessed  himself  guilty  and 
prayed  for  mercy.  Guilty  of  corruption  undoubtedly  he 
was,  since  he  had  taken  gifts  from  suitors,  not  only  after 
judgment,  a  practice  at  which  the  morality  of  that  time 
might  wink,  but  in  one  or  two  cases  at  least  while  the  suit 
was  pending.  Yet  was  he  not  corrupt.  His  fault  was 
rather  a  careless  confidence  in  his  own  virtue,  which  led 
him  not  strictly  to  guard  its  chastity.  Of  the  heavy 
sentence  passed  upon  him  by  the  Lords  the  greater  part 
was  remitted,  and  posterity,  bribed  by  the  splendid  offer- 
ings of  his  intellect,  has  blotted  out  the  rest.  It  was 
in  the  months  immediately  following  his  condemnation 
that  he  wrote  his  History  of  Henry  VII.  He  can  have 
had  little  hold  on  the  king  and  the  favourite  or  they 
would  have  made  greater  efforts  to  save  him. 

The  scene  presently  shifts  from  domestic  politics  to 
diplomacy  and  war.  James  had  slipped  out  of  the  alliance 
with  Holland  against  Spain,  leaving  the  Dutch  to  fight  by 
themselves  the  battle  of  their  emancipation,  which,  how- 
ever, had  by  that  time  been  practically  won.  To  do  this 
he  was  led  not  only  by  his  love  of  peace  and  his  financial 
difficulties,  but  by  the  dislike  which  he  and  his  high 
church  bishops  felt  of  rebellious  traders  making  war 
against  their  anointed  king.  From  peace  with  Spain  he 
had  been  sliding  into  close  diplomatic  relations  and  secret 
alliance.  Spain  being  still  the  grand  monarchy,  his  vanity 
was  flattered  by  the  association.  Yet  he  was  a  protestant 
king,  though  with  catholic  as  well  as  absolutist  leanings  ; 
and  his  two  characters  clashed.  His  daughter  Elizabeth, 
bright  and  brave,  was  the  darling  of  protestant  hearts, 
1613  and  had  married  the  Calvinist  Frederick,  Elector  Palatine. 


xx  JAMES   I  461 

Shakespeare's  "  Tempest,"  with  its  inserted  masque,  had 
been  performed  before  the  court  when  the  German  Fer- 
dinand came  to  bear  away  his  Miranda  from  the  learned 
Prospero's  isle.  All  protestant  sympathies  had  followed 
the  Electress  to  her  new  home.  But  now  broke  over  Ger- 
many the  storm  of  the  Thirty  Years'  War.  Ferdinand  of  1618 
Austria  mounted  the  Imperial  throne.  He  was  a  pupil  of  1619 
the  Jesuits,  a  most  devout  catholic,  had  taken  before  the 
shrine  of  Loretto  a  vow  of  lifelong  enmity  to  heresy,  de- 
clared that  he  would  rather  reign  over  a  desert  than  over 
a  land  of  heretics,  and  had  extirpated  protestantism  in  his 
hereditary  dominions.  In  his  kingdom  of  Bohemia  he  and 
his  Jesuit  advisers  did  not  fail  to  come  into  collision  with 
protestantism,  with  which  here,  and  not  here  alone,  but 
in  France  and  Scotland,  and  perhaps  elsewhere,  was  com- 
bined the  turbulent  ambition  of  an  unbridled  aristocracy. 
Bohemia,  the  Bohemian  nobility  at  least,  rebelled,  flung 
the  Emperor's  representatives,  Martinitz  and  Slawata,  out 
of  the  window,  deposed  Ferdinand,  and  offered  the  crown  1618 
to  Frederick,  Elector  Palatine,  by  whom,  under  an  evil 
star,  it  was  accepted.  The  Elector  was  totally  unequal  to 
the  part  which  he  had  rashly  undertaken.  He  and  his 
kingdom  sank  under  the  Imperial  arms,  and  he  lost  not 
only  Bohemia  but  his  own  principality.  English  protes- 
tantism burst  into  flame.  How  fierce  was  the  flame  and 
how  befouled  with  the  murky  smoke  of  fanaticism  ap- 
peared when,  for  some  slighting  words  about  the  Elector 
Palatine  and  his  wife,  an  aged  Roman  catholic  named 
Floyd  was  adjudged  by  the  two  Houses  of  Parliament,  1621 
acting  in  disgraceful  concert,  to  be  degraded  from  his 
gentility,  to  be  deemed  infamous,  to  ride  on  a  horse  with- 
out a  saddle  and  with  his  face  to  the  tail,  to  be  pilloried, 


462  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

branded,  whipped,  fined  five  thousand  pounds,  and  im- 
prisoned in  Newgate  for  life ;  the  Lords  outvying  the  Com- 
mons in  ferocity  to  show  that,  though  they  had  been 
crossing  the  House  of  Commons  on  a  question  of  privi- 
lege, they  were  not  behind  it  in  protestant  zeal.  In  this 
case  the  Commons,  not  being  a  court  of  justice,  were 
guilty,  besides  their  atrocious  cruelty,  of  usurpation  as 
flagrant  as  any  with  which  they  charged  the  king.  A 
deplorable  impulse  was  given  to  persecuting  legislation, 
and  Sir  John  Eliot,  a  most  liberal  and  noble-minded 
man,  did  not  hesitate  to  suggest  that  the  fleets  should  be 
fitted  out  with  the  fines  of  recusants.  Once  more  we 
see  how  Bacon  might  object  to  transferring  government 
from  the  crown  to  the  House  of  Commons,  whose  des- 
potism would  have  been  uncontrolled. 

Volunteers  streamed  from  Britain  to  the  field  of  relig- 
ious war  in  Germany,  where  they  found  things  scarcely 
corresponding  to  their  imagination  ;  Lutherans,  now  grown 
conservative,  at  variance  with  Calvinists,  in  whom  still 
1618  burned  the  fire  of  iconoclastic  zeal ;  and  protestant  leaders 
sq'  like  Mansfeld,  with  their  undisciplined  and  marauding 
hosts,  behaving  more  like  bandits  than  crusaders  ;  while 
the  Emperor  and  the  Catholic  League,  of  which  Maximilian 
of  Bavaria  was  the  political  head,  had  the  advantage  of 
representing  order  and  national  unity  as  well  as  that  of 
more  regular  armies,  and  of  the  generalship  of  Tilly.  The 
old  puritan  Archbishop  Abbot,  thoroughly  sharing  the 
protestant  enthusiasm  of  the  hour,  urged  on  his  king  to 
the  holy  war  in  which  the  whore  was  to  be  made  deso- 
late, as  had  been  foretold  in  the  Revelation.  For  a  con- 
tinental war  James  had  no  inclination.  As  little  had  he 
the  means.  The  Commons  were  ready  to  pass  flaming 


xx  JAMES   I  463 

resolutions  devoting  their  lives  and  fortunes  to  the  cause ; 
they  were  ready  to  shout  and  to  throw  up  their  hats,  but 
they  were  not  ready  to  support  the  king  with  the  sums 
necessaiy  for  great  armaments,  or  even  to  give  him  a  free 
hand.  Of  foreign  affairs  they  could  know  little,  nor  was 
their  sense  of  responsibility  on  a  par  with  their  zeal. 
What  he  could  do  in  the  way  of  diplomacy  he  did.  But 
his  diplomacy,  feeble  at  best,  was  perplexed  and  weakened 
by  his  conflicting  ties  with  protestantism  on  one  side  and 
catholic  Spain  on  the  other  ;  and  the  result  was  a  web  of 
inconsistency,  vacillation,  and  futility,  the  threads  of  which 
it  is  a  barren  task  for  our  great  historian  to  unwind. 
The  king  and  the  Commons  were  all  the  time  at  cross  pur- 
poses. What  the  king  wanted  was  simply  to  recover  the 
Palatinate  for  his  son-in-law,  which  he  was  willing  to  do 
with  Spanish  aid ;  what  the  Commons  wanted  was  a  pro- 
testant,  patriotic,  and  plundering  war  with  Spain.  They 
little  calculated  the  cost,  or  they  expected  the  capture  of 
Spanish  galleons  to  defray  it.  The  arrogance,  vanity, 
and  insane  schemes  of  Buckingham,  the  all-powerful 
favourite,  worse  confounded  the  confusion. 

For  a  moment  the  great  European  cause  produced  har- 
mony between  the  king  and  the  Commons.  But  the  in- 
trigue which  the  king  was  still  carrying  on  with  Spain, 
and  the  project  of  a  Spanish  marriage  for  his  son  which 
he  still  cherished,  becoming  known,  soon  brought  on  a 
renewal  of  the  discord,  and  in  the  sequel  a  violent  con- 
flict. The  laxity  in  the  enforcement  of  the  penal  laws 
against  catholics,  which  was  the  necessary  consequence 
of  the  flirtation  with  Spain,  excited  the  suspicions,  and 
called  forth  the  fierce  remonstrance  of  the  Commons.  1621 
On  this  occasion  the  House  heard  the  voice  of  its  destined 


464  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

leader,  and  the  destined  chief  of  the  revolution.  John 
Pyra  rose  to  justify  the  penal  laws  against  the  catholics  as 
directed,  not  against  their  religion,  but  against  the  prac- 
tices to  which  their  religion  bound  them,  and  as  intended 
not  to  punish  them  for  believing,  but  to  disable  them  from 
doing  that  which  they  believed  they  ought  to  do. 
1621  The  Commons  protested  against  the  Spanish  policy  and 
the  Spanish  marriage.  The  king  bade  them  not  med- 
dle with  affairs  of  state.  They  asserted  their  right  to  be 
heard.  In  the  wrangle  the  momentous  question  as  to 
their  tenure  of  their  liberties  and  privileges,  which  had 
been  raised  early  in  the  reign,  was  renewed.  The  king 
asserted  that  their  liberties  and  privileges  were  the  gifts 
of  his  ancestors  and  himself;  the  Commons  that  they 
were  their  birthright.  At  a  late  meeting  held  by  can- 
dle-light on  a  December  afternoon  to  forestall  an  im- 
pending adjournment,  the  Commons  passed  a  resolution 
which  ranks  among  the  great  muniments  of  freedom  ; 
—  "  That  the  liberties,  franchises,  privileges,  and  jurisdic- 
tions of  parliament  are  the  ancient  and  undoubted  birth- 
right and  inheritance  of  the  subjects  of  England  ;  and  that 
the  arduous  and  urgent  affairs  concerning  the  king,  state, 
and  defence  of  the  realm  and  of  the  church  of  England, 
and  the  making  and  maintaining  of  laws,  and  redress  of 
grievances,  which  daily  happen  within  this  realm,  are 
proper  subjects  and  matter  of  counsel  and  debate  in 
parliament;  and  that  in  the  handling  and  proceeding 
of  those  businesses  every  member  hath,  and  of  right  ought 
to  have,  freedom  of  speech,  to  propound,  treat,  reason, 
and  bring  to  conclusion  the  same."  A  second  clause 
asserts  for  the  Commons  the  right  to  perfect  freedom 
of  speech.  When  parliament  had  been  adjourned,  James 


xx  JAMES   I  465 

sent   for   the   journals   of   the    House  and   tore   out  the   1621 
impious  page  with  his  own  hand. 

In  the  course  of  the  conflict  twelve  members  of  the 
Commons  went  as  a  deputation  to  the  king  at  Newmarket. 
"Bring  stools,"  said  James,  "for  the  ambassadors."  He 
showed  his  insight ;  for  the  House  which  the  deputation 
represented  was  making  itself  a  sovereign  power. 

The  varied  drama  of  the  reign  closed  with  a  farcical 
escapade.  The  negotiation  for  the  marriage  of  prince 
Charles  with  the  Spanish  princess  hanging  fire,  the  prince 
took  it  into  his  head  himself  to  set  off  for  Madrid  with 
Buckingham  incognito,  and  woo  the  Infanta  in  person.  1623 
To  the  old  king,  who  gave  his  consent  to  the  advent- 
ure in  an  agony  of  fear,  his  son  and  Steenie,  as  he  called 
Buckingham,  seemed  worthy  to  be  heroes  of  a  new 
romance.  Such  an  expedition  had  in  fact  more  of 
romance  in  it  then  than  it  would  have  now,  because,  in 
those  days,  princes  who  got  the  person  of  a  rival  into 
their  hands  were  inclined  to  keep  the  prize.  In  a  comical 
scene  at  Madrid  the  Spanish  Court  displayed  its  prepos- 
terous etiquette  and  its  cunning,  Buckingham  his  inso- 
lence, and  Charles  the  moral  feebleness  which  was  to  be 
his  ruin.  Buckingham  filled  the  Spaniard  with  horror 
by  sitting  in  presence  of  the  prince  in  his  dressing  gown 
without  his  breeches,  turning  his  back  on  royalty,  and 
staring  at  the  sacred  Infanta.  Charles  and  his  father 
were  near  being  betrayed  into  promises  of  illegal  con- 
cessions to  Catholicism  in  England,  which  would  have 
degraded  and  imperilled  the  throne.  Thanks  partly  to 
Buckingham's  unmannerly  pride  the  negotiation  came  to 
nothing,  and  to  the  great  joy  of  protestant  England 
Charles  returned  without  his  Spanish  bride.  Then  en-  1623 
VOL.  i  —  30 


466  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

1624  sued  rupture  and  war  with  Spain.  Middlesex,  the  lord 
treasurer,  still  clung  to  the  Spanish  connection,  which 
Buckingham,  in  his  fit  of  passionate  resentment,  was 
flinging  off.  To  punish  him,  and  at  the  same  time 
divert  public  anger  from  himself,  Buckingham  instigated 

1624  the  Commons  to  impeach  him  for  corruption,  a  crime  of 
which  the  treasurer  seems  in  fact  to  have  been  moder- 
ately guilty.  The  shrewd  old  king  warned  Buckingham 
and  Charles  that  they  would  one  day  have  their  belly- 
*  ful  of  impeachment;  a  prediction  which  they  had  bitter 
reason  to  remember.  Impeachment  was  an  assertion  of 
the  responsibility  of  ministers  to  parliament,  whereas 
Tudor  autocracy  rested  on  the  principle  that  ministers 
were  responsible  to  the  sovereign  alone.  The  ire  of  the 
court  was  also  directed  by  Buckingham  against  Digby, 
afterwards  Earl  of  Bristol,  an  honest  and  high-minded 
diplomatist  who  advocated  a  foreign  policy  not  based  on 
religious  enmities  or  unfriendly  to  Spain,  and  had  ventured 
to  denounce  to  the  king  the  extravagances  of  Buckingham 
at  Madrid.  With  Digby  good  sense  and  high-minded 
patriotism  seem  to  have  departed  from  the  councils  of 
the  crown. 

"  The  Commons  had  now  been  engaged  for  more  than 
twenty  years  in  a  struggle  to  restore  and  to  fortify  their 
own  and  their  fellow-subjects'  liberties.  They  had  ob- 
tained in  this  period  but  one  legislative  measure  of 

1624  importance,  the  late  declaratory  act  against  monopolies. 
But  they  had  rescued"  from  disuse  their  ancient  right  of 
impeachment.  They  had  placed  'on  record  a  protestation 
of  their  claim  to  debate  all  matters  of  public  concern. 
They  had  remonstrated  against  the  usurped  prerogatives 
of  binding  the  subject  by  proclamation,  and  of  levying 


xx  JAMES   I  467 

customs  at  the  outports.  They  had  secured  beyond  con- 
troversy their  exclusive  privilege  of  determining  con- 
tested elections  of  their  members.  They  had  maintained, 
and  carried  indeed  to  an  unwarrantable  extent,  their 
power  of  judging  and  inflicting  punishment,  even  for 
offences  not  committed  against  their  House."  In  these 
words  Hallam  sums  up  the  gains  of  the  Commons  during 
this  reign.  He  might  have  added  the  appropriation  of 
supplies,  since  the  last  parliament  of  James  appropriated  1624 
a  supply  distinctly  to  four  objects  connected  with  the  war. 
A  considerable  stride  had  been  made  towards  the  conver- 
sion of  the  Tudor  despot  into  a  "  Duke  of  Venice." 

The  day  of  Tudor  dictatorship  is  over;  yet  the  Stuart 
may  be  pardoned  for  not  being  sensible  of  the  change,  or 
willing  to  resign  the  power.  The  next  Stuart  will  not  be 
sensible  of  the  change,  nor  willing  to  resign  the  power, 
and  hard  in  consequence  will  be  his  fate. 


CHAPTER   XXI 

CHARLES   I 
BORN  1600 ;   SUCCEEDED  1625 ;  EXECUTED  1649 

rPHE  two  royal  unfortunates  of  history  are  Charles  I. 
and  Louis  XVI.  Both  were  weak  men  set  by  their 
evil  star  to  deal  with  revolutionary  forces  which  it  would 
have  tasked  the  highest  statesmanship  to  master.  Both 
of  them  would  have  been  amiable  in  private  life,  though 
Louis  would  have  been  drowsily  benevolent,  and  Charles 
would  have  shown  more  character.  That  Charles  was  by 
no  means  destitute  of  ability,  his  letters,  the  manner  in 
which  he  defended  his  religion  against  skilful  controver- 
sialists, and  even  his  conduct  as  a  general,  proved.  He 
had  a  serious  sense  of  royal  duty.  He  was  a  man  of 
culture,  a  lover  and  a  judge  of  art.  Morally  he  was  as 
pure  as  Puritanism  itself  could  desire,  for  the  story  of  his 
having  had  a  natural  daughter  may  be  set  down  as  a 
libel.  He  would  have  made  an  average  bishop.  He 
was  a  tender  husband  and  father;  too  tender  a  husband, 
for  his  uxoriousness  was  his  ruin ;  and  it  may  be  said  of 
Henrietta  Maria  as  it  may  of  Marie  Antoinette  that,  had 
she  been  caged  at  the  beginning  of  the  revolution,  her 
husband  would  have  escaped  the  scaffold.  Though  cere- 
monious, Charles  was  affable,  and  a  kind  master.  Like 
George  III.  after  him,  he  had  been  brought  up  with  high 
notions  of  royalty.  Yet  his  notions  of  it  could  hardly  be 


CHAP,  xxi  CHARLES   I  460 

higher  than  was  the  language  held  respecting  it  by  leaders 
of  the  Commons,  the  chief  of  whom,  while  they  were 
wresting  the  sovereignty  to  themselves,  spoke  always  of 
the  king  as  their  sovereign  and  as  God's  vice-gerent.  As 
a  king  he  felt  the  general  tendency  of  monarchy  in  Europe 
to  absolutism,  which  might  approve  itself,  even  to  one 
who  did  not  wear  a  crown,  in  countries  where  absolute 
monarchy  was  the  alternative  to  aristocratic  anarchy  or 
barbarous  disorder.  There  is  no  reason  to  doubt  that 
Charles  meant  to  use  his  power  for  the  good  of  his  people, 
or  that  he  wished  to  make  the  nation  great,  though  he 
erred  in  identifying  its  greatness  with  his  own.  His 
motto,  Amor  Populi  Regis  Prcesidium,  may  well  have 
been  sincerely  chosen ;  nor  is  there  any  ground  for  accus- 
ing him  of  having  set  out  with  a  design  against  public 
liberty.  With  duplicity  he  has  been  justly  charged,  yet, 
in  his  early  days  at  least,  it  was  not  so  much  deliberate 
deceit  as  weakness,  the  consequence  of  the  false  posi- 
tions into  which  he  was  drawn  and  the  contradictory  obli- 
gations in  which  he  became  entangled.  Weakness  he 
inherited  from  his  father,  and  it  appears,  together  with  his 
likeness  to  James,  in  the  portrait  of  him  by  Dobson,  though 
not  in  the  somewhat  idealized  portrait  by  Van  Dyck. 
When  he  was  called  to  the  helm  of  state  in  a  storm  1625 
he  was  barely  twenty-five  years  of  age.  James  had  left 
him  a  fatal  legacy  in  Buckingham,  whose  personal  bril- 
liancy and  fascinations  were  as  great  as  his  wisdom  and 
statesmanship  were  small.  The  favourite  had  the  art  of 
infusion  and  of  making  his  masters  fancy  that  they  were 
leading  when  really  they  were  being  led.  The  early  years 
of  Charles  were  years  of  Buckingham's  misrule. 

The  hated  Spanish  marriage  having  been  thrown  over, 


470  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

1625  a  French  marriage  took  its  place.  France  was  less  catho- 
lic than  Spain,  and  Henrietta  Maria  was  a  daughter  of 
Henry  IV.  Still,  France  was  catholic.  Henrietta,  though 
fond  of  pleasure,  was  devout.  She  brought  her  priests, 
her  Mass,  her  catholic  waiting-women  with  her.  She  came 
believing  that  she  was  to  be  the  protectress  of  her  religion 
in  England.  There  were  equivocal  arrangements  to  be 
made  about  her  personal  worship  and  that  of  her  attend- 
ants. There  was  an  equivocal  understanding  with  the 
v  court  of  France  about  indulgence  to  the  English  catho- 
lics, while  the  jealousy  of  the  Puritan  Commons  was  re- 
awakened by  the  catholic  marriage  and  more  than  ever 
demanded  the  execution  of  the  penal  laws.  It  was  on 
this  rock  that  Charles's  honour  was  wrecked,  first  at 
Madrid  and  afterwards  in  his  negotiations  with  France. 

It  was  not  unnatural  that  Charles,  flattered  by  his  court 
and  infected  with  Buckingham's  ambition,  should  fancy 
himself  a  greater  king  than,  with  his  limited  power  and 
revenue,  he  was,  and  try  to  play  a  part  too  grand  for  him 
on  the  European  scene.  The  ambiguous  position  of  his 
government,  monarchical  and  high  church,  yet  protes- 
tant,  between  the  two  warring  elements  of  European  opin- 
ion, increased  its  perplexities  and  its  weakness.  There 
was  besides  the  purely  family  object  of  recovering  the  Pa- 
latinate for  Charles's  sister  and  her  husband.  The  treaty 
for  a  Spanish  marriage  and  a  lover's  visit  of  Charles  to 
Madrid  are  followed  by  a  protestant  crusade  against  Spain. 
Now  ships  are  lent  to  the  king  of  France  to  be  used 
against  the  rebel  Huguenots;  anon  succours  are  sent  to 
the  rebel  Huguenots  who  are  holding  out  at  Rochelle 

1625   against  the   king   of   France.      The    vast   and    weltering 
imbroglio  in  Germany  continues,  and  with  it  the  hopeless 


xxi  CHARLES  I  471 

effort  to  recover  the  Palatinate  for  Charles's  brother-in- 
law  by  diplomacy  or  advances  of  money  to  protestant  ad- 
venturers. To  the  drain  of  those  advances  are  added 
that  of  Buckingham's  war  with  Spain  and  next  that  of  a 
war  with  France  brought  on  by  a  misunderstanding  as  to  27 
the  religious  rights  of  Henrietta  Maria  and  her  catholic 
attendants,  or,  as  rumour  had  it,  by  the  mad  arrogance  of 
Buckingham,  who  had  incurred  a  rebuff  by  daring  to  lift 
his  eyes  to  the  queen  of  France.  The  recovery  of  the 
Palatinate  was  a  question  in  which,  the  first  burst  of  pro- 
testant sympathy  with  the  Elector  and  Electress  being 
over,  the  royal  family  felt  more  interest  than  the  Com- 
mons. In  the  Spanish  war  the  interest  of  the  Commons 
was  more  hearty.  Spain  was  Apollyon,  and  Apollyon's 
galleons  were  rich  prizes.  But  the  Commons  little  under- 
stood the  diplomatic  entanglements  and  at  once  suspected 
treachery  when,  in  pursuance  of  an  agreement  with  the 
French  government,  whose  alliance  was  necessary  against 
Spain,  English  ships  were  lent  to  be  used  against  pro- 
testant rebels.  They  had  no  confidence  in  Buckingham, 
who  deserved  none ;  or  in  his  subordinates,  who  deserved 
little.  They  drew  tight  their  purse  strings,  and  refused 
the  king  the  supplies  absolutely  necessary  for  the  war. 
It  was  by  lack  of  money  to  carry  on  the  war  and  fulfil  his 
engagements  to  his  confederates,  not  by  his  absolutist 
tendencies,  that  Charles  was  led  in  the  first  instance  to 
have  recourse  to  forced  loans  and  other  modes  of  raising 
money  without  the  consent  of  parliament,  while  he  was 
filling  his  armies  and  fleets  by  a  barbarous  use  of  the 
power  of  impressment.  He  was  reduced  to  pawning  his 
crown  jewels.  The  military  and  naval  administration  was 
wretched  and  the  failure  was  complete  on  land  and  sea. 


472  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

An  expedition  against  Cadiz,  from  which  the  nation 
looked  for  a  renewal  of  the  glories  of  Drake,  ended  not 
only  in  defeat,  but  in  utter  disgrace,  the  troops  getting 

1625  drunk  and  the  sea  captains  refusing  to  fight;  while  the 
treasure  fleet,  the  capture  of  which  was  to  replenish  the 
king's  coffers,  was  allowed  to  escape.  In  the  French  war 
an  attempt  to  relieve  Rochelle  by  a  landing  on  the  Isle  of 
Rlie",  under  the  command  of  Buckingham  himself,  ended 

1627  likewise  in  disaster,  though  Buckingham  showed  courage, 
and  not  only  courage,  but  as  much  conduct  as  could  be 
expected  of  a  novice  in  war.  From  Germany  came  no 
better  news  than  from  Cadiz  or  Rochelle.  Everything 
was  going  down  before  the  armies  of  the  Empire,  com- 
manded by  Wallenstein  and  Tilly.  The  Elector  was  an 
outcast,  and  Mansfeld,  the  vaunted  champion  of  protes- 
tantism, on  whom  aid  had  been  wasted,  not  only  lost, 
but,  with  his  vagabond  host,  disgraced,  the  cause.  The 
pressed  men,  of  whom  the  English  regiments  and  crews 
were  made  up,  being  left  unpaid  and  unfed,  died  of 
want,  cold,  and  disease.  They  mutinied,  deserted  their 
standards,  wandered  over  the  districts  in  which  they  were 
quartered,  plundered  the  farms,  and  insulted  the  wives 
and  daughters  of  the  farmers.  To  repress  these  outrages, 
martial  law  was  proclaimed. 

Meantime,  the  political  struggle  between  the  king  and 
the  Commons,  always  at  bottom  a  struggle  for  supreme 
power,  was  renewed  and  continued  to  rage  through  suc- 

1625  cessive  parliaments.  Charles  at  first  met  his  parliaments 
with  smiling  countenance,  but  the  sun  of  concord  was 
soon  overcast.  Opposition  took  two  forms ;  want  of  con- 
fidence in  Buckingham  as  helmsman  of  the  state,  and 
resistance  to  Romanizing  tendencies,  or  what  were  taken 


xxi  CHARLES   I  473 

to  be  Romanizing  tendencies,  in  the  church.  Buckingham 
managed  to  embroil  himself  and  his  master  with  the  Lords 
as  well  as  with  the  Commons  by  arbitrarily  excluding 
from  their  seats  in  parliament  the  Earl  of  Arundel,  who 
had  offended  him,  and  Digby,  now  the  Earl  of  Bristol, 
who  had  incurred  his  enmity  by  exposing  his  misrepresenta- 
tions about  the  Spanish  marriage  and  the  transactions  at 
Madrid.  Bristol  refused  submission,  the  House  of  Lords 
upheld  with  spirit  the  rights  of  its  members,  and  the  court 
was  obliged  to  give  way. 

Presently  the  shrewd  prophecy  of  the  late  king  that 
Charles  and  Buckingham  would  have  their  bellyful  of 
impeachment  was  fulfilled.  A  resolution  for  the  impeach- 
ment of  Buckingham  was  carried  in  the  House  of  Com-  1626 
mons,  on  well-founded  charges  of  maladministration; 
charges,  not  so  clearly  well-founded,  of  corruption ;  and 
a  totally  unfounded  charge,  not  directly  laid  but  insinu- 
ated, of  having  poisoned  the  late  king.  In  our  day,  in- 
stead of  an  impeachment,  a  vote  of  want  of  confidence 
in  a  minister,  or,  in  case  of  extremity,  a  refusal  of  supply, 
would  do  the  work.  The  form  of  impeachment  involved 
an  investigation  into  the  acts  and  expenditure  of  the 
government,  which  is  said  with  truth  to  have  carried  in 
itself  the  germs  of  revolution.  Responsibility  of  ministers 
to  parliament  was  in  fact  the  issue  now  revived  after  hav- 
ing lain  dormant  almost  since  Lancastrian  times ;  decided 
in  favour  of  the  parliament  as  it  has  been,  it  takes  away 
personal  power  from  the  crown.  We  can  hardly  blame 
Charles  for  standing  by  his  friend  Steenie.  But  in  for- 
bidding the  Commons  to  inquire  into  Buckingham's  ad- 
ministration he  drew  the  responsibility  on  himself. 

Charles  was  no   Romanist.     To  the  end   he  was  true 


474  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

to  the  church  of  England  and  his  own  ecclesiastical 
supremacy.  Anglicanism  may  fairly  regard  him  as  its 
martyr  and  dedicate  churches  to  his  name.  But  he  was 
a  strong  episcopalian,  deeply  impressed  with  the  truth  of 
his  father's  maxim  as  to  the  identity  of  the  king's  interest 
with  that  of  the  bishop,  while,  had  he  been  a  private  man, 
his  own  character  and  tastes  would  have  led  him  to  the 
side  of  church  order  and  of  ritual.  He  was  thus  borne 
against  the  main  current  of  religious  opinion  and  senti- 

• 

ment,  which,  in  the  political  classes,  was  decidedly  Puri- 
tan, and  brought  into  collision  with  the  most  powerful 
and  aspiring  intellects  of  the  day,  whose  ideal  was  an 
unceremonial  worship  and  a  Bible  faith  untrammelled 
by  clerical  authority.  He  had  about  him  a  group  of 
high  church  ecclesiastics,  who,  in  the.  interest  of  their 
order,  exalted  his  prerogative,  and,  if  they  were  hot- 
headed, to  an  alarming  and  irritating  height;  at  the 
same  time  assailing  the  dominant  Calvinism,  which  was 
the  animating  spirit  of  Puritanism,  in  politics  as  in  reli- 

1625  gion.  The  work  of  Montague  which  provoked  the  wrath 
of  the  Commons  was  in  form  a  defence  of  protestantism 
against  the  church  of  Rome,  but  the  grounds  on  which  the 
defence  was  based  were  anti-Calvinist  and  anti-puritan, 
while  political  offence  was  given  by  the  appeal  to  Caesar 
to  defend  with  his  sword  the  writer,  who  would  defend 
him  with  his  pen.  The  suspicions  of  the  Commons  were 
borne  out  by  the  subsequent  career  of  the  author,  who  was 
presently  engaged  in  negotiations  with  a  papal  envoy  and 
went  to  the  very  brink  of  conversion.  The  court  divine, 

1627  Manwaring,  said  in  one  of  his  famous  sermons,  that  the 
first  of  all  relations  was  that  between  the  Creator  and  the 
creature ;  the  next  between  husband  and  wife ;  the  third 


xxi  CHARLES   I  475 

between  parent  and  child ;  the  fourth  between  lord  and 
servant;  and  that  from  all  these  arose  that  most  high, 
sacred,  and  transcendent  relation  between  king  and  sub- 
ject. In  another  passage  he  asks  himself,  why  religion 
doth  associate  God  and  the  king?  and  he  answers  that 
it  may  be  for  one  of  three  reasons ;  because  in  scripture 
the  name  of  God  is  given  to  angels,  priests,  and  kings ;  or 
from  the  propinquity  of  offenders  against  God  and  His 
anointed  king;  or  from  the  parity  of  beneficence  which 
men  enjoy  from  God  and  sacred  kings,  and  which  they 
can  no  more  requite  in  the  case  of  the  king  than  in  the 
case  of  God.  He  reasons,  that  "as  justice,  properly  so 
called,  intercedes  not  between  God  and  man ;  nor  between 
the  prince,  being  a  father,  and  the  people  as  children 
(for  justice  is  between  equals) ;  so  cannot  justice  be  any 
rule  or  medium  whereby  to  give  God  or  the  king  his 
right."  This  doctrine  was  preached  in  the  Chapel  Royal 
to  a  young  king.  Sibthorp  preached  in  the  same  anti-  1627 
puritan  and  absolutist  strain,  claiming  for  the  prince  the 
power  of  making  the  law,  and  maintaining  that  the  sub- 
ject was  bound  to  active  obedience  so  long  as  the  king's 
command  was  moral,  and  that  in  any  case  resistance  was 
impious.  Abbot,  the  old  Puritan  archbishop,  refused  to 
license  Sibthorp's  sermon  and  was  suspended  for  his  re- 
fusal, making  way  for  the  growing  ascendancy  of  Laud. 
Charles  identified  himself  with  the  teachings  of  Montague, 
Manwaring,  and  Sibthorp  by  promoting  them  all  in  de- 
fiance of  the  protests  of  the  Commons.  That  the  Com- 
mons, in  these  protests,  were  contending  for  religious 
liberty  cannot  be  said.  A  national  church  establishment, 
Avith  compulsory  unity  of  orthodox  belief,  was  their  ideal, 
as  much  as  that  of  their  opponents,  while  they  assumed 


476  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

that  the  national  and  orthodox  creed  was  the  Calvinism 
of  the  Lambeth  Articles  and  the  Synod  of  Dort.  They 
were  all  the  time  clamouring  for  the  execution  of  the 
laws  against  papists;  and  extreme  protestant  sectaries, 
such  as  the  Anabaptists,  would  have  met  with  a  not 
less  rigorous  treatment  at  their  hands.  All  that  can 
be  said  is  that  the  creed  for  which  they  contended  was 
the  more  congenial  to  political  liberty,  and  the  more  likely 
to  lead  to  liberty  of  conscience  in  the  end. 

The  leader  of  the  Commons  was  Sir  John  Eliot,  a 
Cornish  gentleman,  high-souled,  patriotic,  hot-blooded, 
and  dauntless,  with  an  oratorical  temperament  and  the 
oratorical  habit  of  one-sided  statement  and  exaggeration. 
From  sympathy  with  Buckingham's  foreign  policy  he 
had  passed  to  unmeasured  denunciation  of  him  as  an 
arch  traitor  and  capital  enemy  of  the  state.  The  com- 
parison of  Buckingham  to  Sejanus,  in  his  speech  as  mana- 
ger of  the  impeachment  before  the  House  of  Lords,  is  a 
famed  stroke  of  eloquence  and  may  be  cited  as  one  of 
the  first  fruits  of  the  rhetoric  by  which  the  councils  of 
the  nation  have  been  swayed.  "  Your  lordships  have  an 
idea  of  the  man,  what  he  is  in  himself,  what  in  his  affec- 
tions !  You  have  seen  his  power,  and  some,  I  fear,  have 
felt  it!  You  have  known  his  practice,  and  have  heard 
the  effects.  It  rests,  then,  to  be  considered  what,  being 
such,  he  is  in  reference  to  the  king  and  state,  how  com- 
patible or  incompatible  with  either.  In  reference  to  the 
king,  he  must  be  styled  the  canker  in  his  treasure ;  in 
reference  to  the  state,  the  moth  of  all  goodness.  What 
future  hopes  are  to  be  expected,  your  lordships  may  draw 
out  of  his  actions  and  affections.  In  all  precedents  I  can 
hardly  find  him  a  match  or  parallel.  None  so  like  him  as 


xxi  CHARLES  I  477 

Sejanus,  thus  described  by  Tacitus,  Audax,  sui  obtegem, 
in  alios  criminator,  juxta  adulator  et  superbus.  My  lords, 
for  his  pride  and  flattery  it  was  noted  of  Sejanus  that  he 
did  clientes  suos  provinciis  adornare.  Doth  not  this  man 
the  like  ?  Ask  England,  Scotland,  and  Ireland,  and  they 
will  tell  you !  Sejanus's  pride  was  so  excessive,  Tacitus 
saith,  that  he  neglected  all  counsel,  mixed  his  business 
and  service  with  the  prince,  seemed  to  confound  their 
actions,  and  was  often  styled  imperatoris  laborum  socius. 
How  lately  and  how  often  hath  this  man  commixed  his 
actions,  in  discourse,  with  actions  of  the  king  !  My  lords, . 
I  have  done.  You  see  the  man !  By  him  came  all  these 
evils;  in  him  we  find  the  cause;  on  him  we  expect  the 
remedies  ;  and  to  this  we  met  your  lordships  in  conference." 

Eliot,  though  a  strong  protestant,  was  no  narrow  Puri- 
tan. His  work,  "The  Monarchy  of  Man,"  in  which  his 
somewhat  misty  philosophy  is  expounded,  shows  that 
his  ideal  was  not  a  republic,  but  a  monarchy.  He  seems 
even  to  have  thought  that  monarchical  government  had  its 
archetjrpe  in  the  heavenly  spheres.  That  he  was  morally 
dethroning  the  monarch  and  transferring  supreme  power 
to  the  representatives  of  the  people,  neither  he  nor  any  one 
of  his  party  saw. 

The  classical  allusion  in  Sir  John  Eliot's  speech  re- 
minds us  that  beside  the  Bible  and  Calvinism  another 
element  has  now  mingled  with  public  character  and  life. 
It  is  that  of  Greek  and  Roman  antiquity,  with  its  republi- 
canism, its  proud  notions  of  personal  liberty,  its  tyranni- 
cide. Nor  would  the  political  sentiment  of  Timoleon  and 
Brutus  be  practically  out  of  unison  with  that  of  the 
Hebrew  prophet  who  denounces  the  sins  of  kings,  or  with 
that  of  the  Psalmist  who  would  bind  kings  with  chains 


478  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

and  nobles  with  fetters  of  iron.  With  the  humility  and 
meekness  of  Christianity,  the  haughty  self-assertion  of  the 
Greek  or  Roman  republican  would  not  so  well  agree. 

It  could  not  be  denied  that  the  Commons  had  originally 
countenanced  the  government  in  the  undertaking  to  re- 
cover the  Palatinate  and  pressed  on  it  war  with  Spain. 
Yet  they  withheld  the  necessary  supplies,  pleading  the 
incapacity  and  failure  of  the  administration.  Peace 
with  retrenchment  might  have  relieved  the  government 
from  its  embarrassments,  and  given  it  a  free  hand  in  home 
•politics.  But  such  a  policy  was  too  tame  for  Bucking- 
ham's vanity.  To  provide  ways  and  means  the  crown  had 
recourse  not  only  to  fines  for  refusal  of  knighthood  and 
other  feudal  extortions,  to  raising  the  rents  of  crown  lands 
upon  the  tenants,  to  pawning  the  crown  jewels,  to  impress- 
ment of  soldiers  and  seamen  and  exaction  of  ships  from 
the  seaports,  but  to  levying  tonnage  and  poundage,  the 
duties  on  imported  merchandise,  without  vote  of  parlia- 
ment, and  to  forced  loans.  The  levying  of  tonnage  and 
poundage  was  excused,  and  perhaps  was  excusable,  on  the 
ground  that  they  had  hitherto  been  granted  as  a  matter  of 
course  for  the  reign.  For  refusing  to  contribute  to  the 
loan  a  number  of  gentlemen  were  thrown  into  prison,  and 
the  subserviency  of  the  judges  upheld  the  crown  in  its 
disregard  of  the  principle  of  personal  liberty  secured  by 
the  Habeas  Corpus.  An  attempt  to  break  the  force  of 

1626  opposition  by  making  some  of  its  leaders  sheriffs,  and  thus 
excluding  them  from  the  House  of  Commons,  met  with 
deserved  failure,  and  the  elections  went  generally  against 
the  government.  The  young  king  gave  way  to  his  temper. 

1628  He  opened  his  famous  third  parliament  by  telling  the  Com- 
mons that  "if  they  would  not  do  their  duty  by  granting 


xxi  CHARLES   I  479 

supplies,  he  must  use  other  means  which  God  had  put  into 
his  hands  to  save  that  which  the  follies  of  other  men  might 
otherwise  hazard  to  lose."  This  he  bade  them  not  take 
as  threatening,  since  he  scorned  to  threaten  any  but  his 
equals.  Sir  John  Coke,  leader  for  the  crown  in  the 
Commons,  raised  a  storm  by  insinuating  that  if  the  people 
provoked  the  king  he  might  be  tempted  to  reduce  them  to 
the  condition  of  the  French  peasantry,  who  were  as  thin  as 
ghosts  and  wore  wooden  shoes. 

The  answer  to  the  royal  menace  was  the  Petition  of  1628 
Right,  on  the  king's  assent  to  which  the  Commons  insisted 
as  the  condition  of  supply,  while,  to  justify  their  attitude, 
they  held  out  the  promise  of  a  liberal  grant.  The  petition 
was  a  reversion  to  the  old  form  of  legislation  for  redress  of 
grievances.  The  grievances  of  which  redress  was  sought 
were  four ;  forced  loans  ;  arbitrary  imprisonment ;  billeting 
of  soldiers  on  private  houses ;  and  martial  law.  The  chief 
grounds  of  complaint  were  the  first  two.  The  billeting, 
though  vexatious,  seems  not  to  have  been  illegal,  nor, 
was  martial  law,  if  applied  only  to  the  soldiery,  a  wrong. 
The  king  struggled  hard  for  what  he  believed  to  be  his 
prerogative,  but  he  struggled  in  vain.  An  opposition  too 
strong  for  Buckingham's  influence  had  by  this  time  been 
formed  even  in  the  House  of  Lords  by  Puritan  peers,  such 
as  Bedford  and  Saye  and  Sele,  with  men  like  Bristol  and 
Arundel,  who  had  been  injured  by  the  court,  and  one  or 
two  bishops  who  did  not  go  with  Laud.  Charles  asked 
the  Commons  instead  of  binding  him  by  law  to  take  his 
word.  "  What  need,"  said  Pym,  now  rising  to  leadership, 
"have  we  of  the  king's  word,  when  already  we  have  his 
coronation  oath?"  A  middle  party  in  the  Lords  proposed 
to  insert  words  saving  to  the  king  his  sovereign  power. 


480  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CIIAI-. 

"  I  am  not  able,"  said  Pym,  "  to  speak  to  this  question.  I 
know  not  what  it  is.  All  our  petition  is  for  the  laws  of 
England,  and  this  power  seems  to  be  another  distinct 
power  from  the  power  of  law.  I  know  how  to  add  sover- 
eign to  the  king's  person,  but  not  to  his  power.  We 
cannot  leave  to  him  sovereign  power,  for  we  never  were 
possessed  of  it."  The  king  contended  for  a  reserved  pre- 
rogative or  sovereignty  beyond  the  law  to  be  exerted 
whenever  in  his  judgment  there  was  need.  The  Commons 
contended  that  the  law  should  in  all  cases  be  supreme,  and 
that  they  should  make  the  law;  in  other  words,  that  the 
sovereign  power  should  be  theirs.  Reduced  to  extremity, 
the  king  gave  his  consent  to  the  Petition  of  Right,  at  first 
not  in  the  plain  and  customary  form  "  Let  right  be  done, 
as  is  desired,"  but  in  a  form  roundabout  and  evasive.  At 

1628  last  he  gave  his  consent  in  the  plain  form.  The  Petition 
of  Right,  regarded  as  second  only  to  the  Great  Charter, 
was  added  to  the  muniments  of  liberty  and  to  the  pledges 
for  the  supremacy  of  parliament.  Shouting,  bell-ringing, 
and  bonfires  proclaimed  the  victory  of  the  Commons. 
Yet  the  strife  hardly  abated.  To  the  Petition  of  Right 

1628  succeeded  remonstrance  against  the  proceedings  of  the 
high  church  and  absolutist  divines,  which  the  king  had 
made  more  offensive  by  the  promotion  of  the  offenders; 
against  the  foreign  policy  and  general  administration  of 
Buckingham ;  against  the  persistent  levying  of  tonnage 
and  poundage  without  the  vote  of  parliament.  With 
tonnage  and  poundage  the  king  vowed  he  could  not  dis- 
pense, and  in  truth  he  would  have  deprived  himself  of  the 
means  of  carrying  on  his  government.  Previous  parlia- 
ments had  been  dissolved  in  a  storm.  This  parliament  was 

1628   prorogued.     Only  so  far  was  there  an  appearance  of  recon- 


xxi  CHARLES  I  481 

dilation.  Allowance  must  always  be  made  on  the  king's 
behalf  for  the  ambiguities  of  constitutional  tradition  and 
the  variation  of  precedents  between  Lancastrian  and  Tudor 
times,  as  well  as  for  the  formal  recognition  by  the  Com- 
mons of  the  royal  supremacy  and  government  which,  half 
unconsciously,  they  were  labouring  to  overthrow.  Only  a 
sympathy  almost  miraculous  between  the  wearer  of  the 
crown  and  the  Commons  could  have  averted  quarrel  and 
ultimate  collision. 

With  Buckingham,  the  struggle  came  to  a  tragic  close. 
When  he  was  on  the  point  of  embarking  on  another  mili- 
tary escapade,  his  dazzling  and  mischievous  career  was  cut 
short  by  the  knife  of  an  assassin,  in  whose  morbid  brain,  as  1628 
often  happens,  the  ferment  of  public  discontent  had  blended 
with  a  private  grudge.  So  intense  had  the  feeling  against 
Buckingham  become,  that  his  assassin  was  saluted  as  a  hero 
and  a  martyr.  Something  may  be  excused  to  one  who  by 
a  freak  of  fortune  was  raised  when  he  was  a  mere  boy  to  a 
giddy  height  and  was  only  thirty-six  when  he  died.  But  to 
Buckingham's  vanity,  folly,  and  personal  resentments  are 
evidently  to  be  ascribed  the  ruinous  mistakes  and  incon- 
sistencies of  foreign  policy;  the  chimerical  attempts  of 
England,  now  hardly  more  than  a  second-rate  power, 
to  dominate  as  a  first-rate  power  on  the  continent;  the 
Spanish  war  and  the  attempts  to  draw  France  into  the 
combination  against  Spain ;  the  loan  to  the  French  mon- 
archy in  pursuance  of  that  combination,  of  English  ships  to 
be  used  against  the  protestants  of  Rochelle,  which  could 
not  fail  to  arouse  the  angry  suspicions  of  the  protestants 
at  home ;  the  subsequent  rupture  and  war  with  France, 
and  the  hopeless  attempts,  by  supporting  the  Huguenot  in- 
surrection, to  defeat  the  policy  of  Richelieu  and  prevent  the 

VOL.   I 31 


482  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CUAF. 

consolidation  of  the  French  kingdom.  The  financial  em- 
barrassments into  which  this  series  of  follies  brought  the 
English  monarchy  laid  it  at  the  feet  of  the  Commons, 
and  when  it  had  quarrelled  with  parliament,  drove  it  to 
irregular  ways  of  raising  money,  which,  combined  with 
its  ecclesiastical  policy  of  reaction,  led  to  its  overthrow. 
The  removal  of  Buckingham  from  the  scene  uncovered 

1629  the  king,  against  whom,  when  parliament  met  again,  the 
attack  was  directly  pointed.  The  grievances  now  were 
levying  tonnage  and  poundage  when  they  had  not  been 
voted  by  parliament,  and  the  countenance  which  the 
crown  had  lent  to  the  high  church  and  anti-puritan  move- 
ment by  the  promotion  of  Montague  and  Manwaring, 
together  with  the  progress  of  Arminianism  and  ritualism 
among  the  clergy;  constitutionalism,  Puritanism,  and. 
Calvinism  always  moving  together.  In  ecclesiastical  as 
well  as  civil  legislation  the  Commons  strove  to  make 
themselves  supreme,  to  the  exclusion  of  the  clerical  con- 
vocation, which  was  ruled  through  the  bishops  by  the 
king.  The  king  put  forth  his  manifesto  with  respect  to 
the  Thirty-nine  Articles,  demanding  a  uniform  and  un- 

1629  swerving  profession  of  them,  and  in  effect  ordaining  that 
they  should  be  taken  in  the  sense  which  it  might  please 
him  as  supreme  governor  of  the  church  and  the  con- 
vocation with  his  license  to  assign  them.  The  Commons 
contended  that  the  Articles  should  be  taken  in  what  they 
deemed  the  orthodox,  that  is,  the  Calvinistic,  sense. 
They  passed  resolutions  denouncing  the  spread  of  Armini- 
anism with  popery  in  its  train,  the  placing  of  communion- 
tables as  altars,  and  ritualistic  practices  of  all  kinds.  As 
the  standards  of  orthodoxy,  they  pointed  to  the  writings  of 
the  Calvinjst  Jewel,  the  ultra-Calvinist  Lambeth  Articles, 


xxi  CHARLES   I  483 

and  the  resolutions  of  the  Calvinist  and  un-episcopal 
Synod  of  Dort.  The  king,  losing  patience,  sent  an  order 
to  the  Commons  to  adjourn.  The  Speaker  wished  to 
obey.  But  the  patriots  held  him  down  in  his  chair  till 
resolutions  against  the  levying  of  tonnage  and  poundage 
without  a  vote  of  parliament  and  against  the  encourage- 
ment of  high  church  principles  had  been  passed.  Then 
tumultuously  the  Commons  adjourned. 

A  dissolution  followed,  while  Eliot  and  eight  other  1629 
members  were  imprisoned  by  royal  warrant  for  their  con- 
duct in  the  last  scene.  A  battle  in  the  courts  for  their 
liberation  by  Habeas  Corpus  ensued,  with  the  usual  hesi-  1630 
tation  and  fencing  on  the  part  of  the  judges,  who  were 
unwilling  to  break  the  law  while  they  wished  to  uphold 
the  prerogative  of  the  crown.  It  was  much  that 
there  was  a  law  which  the  judges  were  unwilling  to 
break.  Six  of  the  nine  members  made  their  submission 
and  were  released,  Selden,  who  was  no  zealot,  not  without 
a  stain  upon  his  honour.  Eliot,  disdaining  submission, 
remained  in  prison  till  he  died,  employing  himself  in 
writing  his  "  Monarchy  of  Mail."  The  chills  of  his 
prison-house  hastened  his  death.  His  son  asked  leave  to  1632 
bury  him  in  his  Cornish  home.  Charles  wrote  on  the 
petition,  "Let  Sir  John  Eliot  be  buried  in  the  church  of 
that  parish  where  he  died."  It  was  an  unusual  exhibition 
of  bad  feeling  on  the  part  of  Charles,  and  he  rued  it,  for 
it  helped  to  make  the  war  between  him  and  the  parlia- 
mentary leaders  internecine. 

English  liberty  has  been  peculiarly  indebted  to  the 
courage  of  private  citizens  who  have  dared  to  stand  forth 
single-handed  in  the  cause  of  public  right.  Bate  in  the 
last  reign 'had  stood  forth  single-handed  against  impositions 


484  THE   UNITED  KINGDOM  CHAP. 

on  merchandise.  Richard  Chambers,  a  London  merchant, 
now  stands  forth  against  the  levying  of  customs  duties 
without  an  Act  of  parliament.  He  is  brought  before  the 
star  chamber,  where  he  had  no  chance  of  justice,  and 
resolutely  refusing  submission  is  kept  in  prison  for  six 
years,  while  his  goods  are  seized  for  the  tax.  In  vain  he 
seeks  a  remedy  in  the  court  of  common  law.  In  questions 
between  prerogative  and  the  rights  of  the  subject,  the 
judges,  while  they  are  not  without  conscience,  waver  and 
take  refuge  in  technicalities.  Their  technical  decision 
could  settle  nothing.  In  their  law-books  they  might  find 
the  letter  of  the  law;  they  could  not  find  the  balance 
between  constitutional  principle  and  necessities  of  state. 
In  the  cases  of  Eliot  and  Chambers  together  the  king  had 
warning  enough. 

Buckingham  gone,  the  chief  ministers  for  a  time  were 
Weston  and  Cottington,  both  of  them  catholics  at  heart, 
both  of  them  in  favour  of  Spanish  connection,  but  both  of 
them  steady-going  and  sure-footed  men  thinking  more  of 
finance  and  of  material  interests  than  of  religious  disputes 
or  of  ambitious  diplomacy,  who  might  have  replenished 
the  exchequer,  evaded  thorny  questions,  and  carried  on 
the  government  in  a  safe  though  unambitious  way. 

Charles  held  the  reins  himself  long  enough  to  show 
that  he  had  been  not  only  the  patron,  but  the  pupil  of 
Buckingham.  Presently  he  had  two  new  and  memorable 
advisers,  Laud,  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  and,  somewhat 
later,  Wentworth,  better  known  as  the  Earl  of  Strafford. 
Our  idea  of  Laud  has  been  tinged  by  the  art  which 
paints  everything  black  or  white,  and  is  prodigal  of  var- 
nish. He  was  not  a  bigot  or  a  fanatic,  but  a  martinet, 
and  so  long  as  he  could  enforce  universal  conformity  to 


xxi  CHARLES   I  485 

his  rule  of  church  government  and  worship,  cared  not 
much  about  speculative  opinion,  nor  was  unwilling  that 
it  should  be  free  in  the  closets  of  Chillingworth  and 
Hales.  The  school  of  which  he  was  the  chief  has  even, 
in  virtue  of  its  opposition  to  Calvinistic  rigour  and  nar- 
rowness, been  deemed  liberal.  His  weaknesses  have  also 
been  overstated.  The  notices  of  dreams  and  omens  in  his 
diary  were  hardly  proofs  of  superstition  in  an  age  in  which 
astrology  kept  its  hold  on  such  a  man  of  science  as  Kepler, 
and  on  such  a  man  of  action  as  Wallenstein.  His  religion 
was  Anglicanism,  and  Anglicanism  as  the  ordinance  of  the 
state.  In  defence  of  this  he  had  fleshed  his  controversial 
sword  at  Oxford,  where  Calvinism  still  reigned.  At  Ox- 
ford also,  as  head  of  a  college,  he  had  learned  despotic  rule. 
His  temper  was  choleric ;  it  did  not  prevent  his  courting 
the  powerful,  but  it  made  him  sometimes  rude  to  lesser 
men.  His  character  was  bespoken  by  his  small  bustling 
figure,  high-drawn  eyebrows,  sharp  face,  and  peering  look. 
He  had  made  his  way  to  court  and  to  royal  favour,  though 
the  old  king  shrewdly  suspected  that  he  would  one  day 
give  trouble.  Trouble  he  soon  gave  as  Dean  of  Glouces-  1616 
ter  by  tilting  against  the  Puritanism  of  that  city.  He 
allied  himself  closely  with  Buckingham,  by  whose  vices 
it  does  not  seem  that  his  austerity  was  repelled.  Made 
bishop  of  St.  David's,  he  scrupled  not  to  leave  his  Welsh  1621 
flock  untended  while  he  stayed  at  court  pushing  his  fort- 
une. From  St.  David's  he  climbed  to  Bath  and  Wells,  1626 
thence  to  London,  in  which  see,  as  it  was  a  hot-bed  of  1628 
Puritanism,  he  found  plenty  of  food  for  his  regulative 
activity.  At  last,  on  the  death  of  Abbot,  he  reached  the  1633 
highest  mark  of  that  ambition,  of  which  his  admirers 
own  that  he  was  not  devoid,  and  was  joyously  greeted  by 


486  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

the  king,  whose  heart  he  had  won,  as  "  My  Lord's  Grace 
of  Canterbury."  His  rival  in  the  race,  Williams,  Bishop 
of  Lincoln  and  for  three  years,  by  a  strange  reversion  to 
the  practice  of  the  ecclesiastical  middle  ages,  lord  chan- 
cellor, was  a  clever  and  shifty  adventurer,  who  studied 
the  weather,  and  though  he  might  not  have  guided 
Charles  to  the  heights  of  honour,  would  never  have 
guided  him  to  the  block.  But  Williams  had  given 
offence  and  been  cashiered.  The  king  being  ecclesiasti- 
cally supreme,  Laud,  having  Charles's  unbounded  confi- 
dence, was  pope  of  the  state  church,  little  trammelled 
even  by  the  independent  authority  of  bishops  or  con- 
vocation. But  he  was  not  satisfied  with  ecclesiastical 
power.  Soon  he  was  on  the  commission  of  the  treasury 
and  at  the  head  of  the  committee  of  foreign  affairs. 
When  Weston  died  and  Cottington's  influence  had  given 
way,  Laud  was  practically  the  head  of  the  government. 
1636  He  presently  got  his  lieutenant,  Bishop  Juxon,  made 
treasurer.  Secular  power  in  the  hands  of  ecclesiastics 
seemed  to  him  the  surest  safeguard  of  the  church,  and 
he  pursued  th«  same  policy  in  Scotland,  where  an  arch- 
bishop was  made  chancellor  and  seven  bishops  were  intro- 
duced into  the  privy  council.  The  actual  fruits  of  this 
profound  policy  were  a  general  reaction  against  ecclesi- 
astical encroachment  and  the  special  jealousy  of  the 
grandees,  who  looked  on  the  offices  of  state  as  their  own. 
The  lawyers,  also,  as  the  royalist  historian  complains, 
were  embittered  against  the  encroaching  churchmen. 

From  the  dark  and  haughty  countenance  of  Wentworth 
looked  forth  power  and  love  of  command.  It  seems  hard 
to  maintain  that  the  career  of  a  man  who  was  first  one 
of  the  leaders  of  a  parliamentary  opposition,  and  then  the 


xxi  CHARLES  I  487 

minister  of  a  king  who  was  trying  to  govern  without 
parliament,  can  have  been  perfectly  consistent  in  anything 
but  ambition,  though  his  ambition  may  have  been  gener- 
ous and  he  may  have  had  the  greatness  of  the  country  as 
well  as  of  the  monarchy  always  at  heart.  To  his  former 
allies  in  the  House  of  Commons  assuredly  Wentworth's 
career  did  not  seem  consistent,  even  supposing  we  regard 
as  apocryphal  the  anecdote  which  makes  Pym  vow  ven- 
geance against  the  renegade.  Wentworth,  when  he  was 
attacking  Buckingham,  was  cutting  his  way  to  power, 
which  he  meant,  as  a  great  intelligence,  when  he  had 
attained  it  to  use  well.  Full  credit  may  be  given  him  for 
sincere  disapprobation  of  Buckingham's  policy,  and  of 
the  ill-advised  action  of  the  court  which  provoked  the 
Petition  of  Right.  His  ideal  no  doubt  was,  like  that  of 
Bacon,  a  patriotic  and  enlightened  monarchy  with  a  com- 
pliant parliament  and  a  judiciary  faithful  to  the  preroga- 
tive, himself  being  prime  minister  and  the  moving  spirit 
of  the  whole.  But  as  parliament  proved  intractable,  he 
embraced  autocracy  with  himself  as  vizier.  With  apos- 
tasy from  mean  motives  or  in  an  ignoble  sense  it  would 
be  unjust  to  charge  him,  but  it  cannot  be  denied  that 
there  was  a  sharp  turn,  such  as  to  the  friends  whom  he 
left  might  seem  apostasy,  in  his  political  career. 

From  the  presidency  of  the  council  of  the  north,  a  local 
government  with  arbitrary  powers,  which  had  survived 
from  Tudor  times  of  rebellion,  Strafford  went  as  lord  1633 
deputy  to  Ireland.  There  he  played  the  beneficent 
despot  for  whom  Ireland  yearned ;  put  the  parliament 
under  his  feet,  an  operation  rendered  easier  by  Poynings's 
law  giving  the  English  privy  council  control  over  Irish 
legislation ;  reformed  the  administration,  civil  and  mili- 


488  THE   UNITED  KINGDOM  CHAP. 

tary ;  restored  the  finances ;  tried  to  foster  trade.  He 
set  in  order  and  purified  as  far  as  he  could  the  corrupt, 
swinish,  and  scandalous  Establishment,  the  sight  of  which 
made  protestantism  and  the  civilization  connected  with  it 
hateful  to  the  Irish  people  ;  the  clergy  living  like  laymen, 
sometimes  like  dissolute  laymen,  and  following  unclerical 
pursuits,  the  estates  of  the  church  being  plundered,  chari- 
table funds  being  abused,  churches  being  turned  into 
dwelling-houses,  stables,  or  tennis  courts,  and  the  vaults 
under  them  into  taverns,  while  maids  and  apprentices 
lolled  upon  the  table  used  for  the  administration  of  the 
sacrament.  So  far  well.  It  was  not  so  well  when  Straf- 
ford  proceeded  to  dispossess  the  native  raoe  and  by  ver- 
dicts wrung  from  intimidated  juries  confiscated  to  the 
1634  crown  a  great  part  of  the  land  of  Connaught.  Nor  did 
the  man  fail  in  the  seat  of  power  to  show  his  overbear- 
ing pride.  He  heedlessly  trod  on  more  than  one  worm 
which  turned  on  him.  From  Ireland  he  corresponds 
with  Laud.  There  can  be  no  reasonable  doubt  as  to  the 
object  which  the  two  men  have  in  view,  and  which  they 
denote  by  the  cant  word  "  Thorough."  Thorough  reform 
of  the  king's  service  by  the  sweeping  away  of  inefficiency, 
peculation,  and  corruption,  no  doubt  as  statesmen  they 
did  desire,  but  what  they  mean  by  "  Thorough "  is  the 
complete  ascendancy  of  the  prerogative.  "  I  know  no 
reason,  then,"  wrote  Stratford  to  Laud,  "but  you  may 
as  well  rule  the  common  lawyers  in  England  as  I,  poor 
beagle,  do  here ;  and  yet  that  I  do,  and  will  do,  in  all  that 
concerns  my  master's  service,  upon  the  peril  of  my  head. 
I  am  confident  that  the  king,  being  pleased  to  set  himself 
in  the  business,  is  able  by  his  wisdom  and  ministers  to 
carry  any  just  and  honourable  action  thorough  all  imagi- 


xxi  CHARLES   I  489 

nary  opposition,  for  real  there  can  be  none ;  that  to  start 
aside  for  such  panick  fears,  phantastick  apparitions,  as  a 
Prynne  or  an  Eliot  shall  set  up,  were  the  meanest  folly 
in  the  whole  world;  that  the  debts  of  the  crown  taken 
off,  you  may  govern  as  you  please."  This  is  not  reform 
of  his  majesty's  service.  Nor  can  it  well  be  questioned 
that  the  army  which  Strafford  was  organizing  in  Ireland 
was  intended  by  him  to  be  used  at  need  for  a  political 
purpose.  He  said  himself  that  if  the  king  could  only 
have  the  power  of  levying  money  to  pay  soldiers  as  well 
as  to  pay  ships,  it  would  "  vindicate  the  royalty  at  home 
from  under  the  conditions  and  restraints  of  subjects,  and 
render  us  also  abroad,  even  to  the  greatest  kings,  the 
mofet  considerable  monarchy  in  Christendom."  Of  his 
Irish  government  Wentworth  could  boast  that  the  king 
was  as  absolute  there  as  any  prince  in  the  world,  and  so 
might  remain  if  the  ministers  in  England  would  do  their 
part. 

By  admirers  of  Strafford  and  Laud  their  government 
has  been  painted  as  protection  of  the  people  against  a 
selfish  and  oppressive  oligarchy ;  as  an  anticipation,  in 
fact,  of  the  Tory  democracy  of  our  time.  This  would 
be  interesting  if  it  were  true.  But  on  what  does  it  rest? 
Something  was  done  for  poor  debtors  and  for  improvement 
in  the  administration  of  the  Poor  Law  and  the  application 
of  charitable  funds.  Something  was  done  for  the  special 
protection  of  women.  Strafford  takes  credit  to  himself 
for  having  in  Ireland  meted  out  equal  justice  to  high  and 
low ;  but  the  native  Irish  of  Connaught  would  hardly 
have  endorsed  the  boast.  There  is  nothing  to  show  that 
in  the  hour  of  his  fall  the  heart  of  the  people  was  with 
him.  Laud,  Clarendon  tells  us,  displayed  in  his  admin- 


490  THE    UNITED    KINGDOM  CHAP. 

istration  of  church  discipline  a  noble  impartiality,  not  re- 
garding the  rank  of  the  offender.  This  was  well,  though 
the  culprits  might  have  remembered  that  the  stern  cen- 
sor had  served  the  uncanonical  love  of  Mountjoy  and 
allied  himself  with  the  libertine  Buckingham.  But 
there  is  not  much  in  it  of  Tory  democrac}'-.  Nor  in 
impressing  poor  men  by  thousands,  dragging  them  from 
their  homes  to  serve  in  the  fleet  or  army,  keeping  them 
without  rations  or  clothes,  and  hanging  them  by  scores 
under  martial  law  when  they  helped  themselves  to  food, 
did  the  government  of  Charles  show  much  sympathy  for 
the  masses.  There  was  an  aristocratic  element  in  the 
opposition,  as  there  was  in  that  of  the  Huguenots  and 
afterwards  of  the  Fronde,  as  there  was  in  the  revolt  of 
the  Netherlands,  in  the  Bohemian  revolt,  in  the  German 
and  Scotch  reformations ;  while  in  the  motives  of  the 
aristocracy  with  religion  or  patriotism  were  mingled  in 
different  proportions  class  interests  or  passions,  lust 
after  church  spoils,  jealousy  of  the  political  power  of 
ecclesiastics,  it  may  be  feudal  impatience  of  all  law  and 
government.  The  House  of  Lords  could  not  like  to  be 
over-shadowed  by  autocracy ;  it  was  jealous  of  church- 
men, like  Laud  and  Juxon,  who  supplanted  it  in  court 
favour  and  in  the  offices  of  state.  The  Tudor  nobility 
still  had  reason  to  fear  a  catholic  reaction.  It  is  not 
likely  that  even  the  English  aristocracy,  though  compara- 
tively popular,  was  without  its  share  of  arrogance,  or  did 
not  sometimes  trample  on  dependents.  It  was  at  its  worst 
probably  in  the  still  half-feudal  north  which  was  the  scene 
of  Strafford's  autocratic  rule.  So  far  as  the  government 
of  Straff ord  and  Laud  sought  to  control  oligarchical  mu- 
tiny or  insolence,  it  deserves  sympathy.  Of  their  Tory 


xxi  CHARLES    I  491 

democracy  this  seems  to  be  about  the  sum.  Richelieu 
humbled  the  noble  before  the  crown  without  doing 
much  for  the  peasant. 

The  privy  council  now  usurped  legislative  functions, 
and  the  star  chamber,  organized  to  suppress  master- 
ful wrong  in  unsettled  and  lawless  times,  became  the 
instrument  of  repression  in  the  hands  of  an  arbitrary 
government;  while  the  court  of  high  commission,  insti- 
tuted by  Elizabeth  as  the  engine  of  her  despotism  in  the 
church,  served  the  procrustean  policy  of  Laud.  "  For  the 
better  support  of  these  extraordinary  ways,  and  to  pro- 
tect the  agents  and  instruments  who  must  be  employed 
in  them,  and  to  discountenance  and  suppress  all  bold 
inquirers  and  opposers,  the  council  table  and  star  cham- 
ber enlarge  their  jurisdictions  to  a  vast  extent,  '  holding ' 
(as  Thucydides  said  of  the  Athenians)  'for  honourable 
that  which  pleased,  and  for  just  that  which  profited ' ; 
and,  being  the  same  persons  in  several  rooms,  grew  both 
courts  of  law  to  determine  right,  and  courts  of  revenue 
to  bring  money  into  the  treasury;  the  council  table  by 
proclamations  enjoining  this  to  the  people  that  was  not 
enjoined  by  the  law,  and  prohibiting  that  which  was  not 
prohibited;  and  the  star  chamber  censuring  the  breach 
and  disobedience  to  those  proclamations  by  very  great 
fines  and  imprisonment;  so  that  any  disrespect  to  acts 
of  state  or  to  the  persons  of  statesmen  was  in  no  time 
more  penal,  and  those  foundations  of  right,  by  which 
men  valued  their  security,  to  the  apprehension  and  un- 
derstanding of  wise  men,  never  more  in  danger  to  be 
destroyed."  These  are  the  words  of  the  royalist  histo- 
rian Clarendon. 

In  the  absence  of  parliamentary  supplies,  how  were  the 


492  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

expenses  of  government  to  be  met?  Tonnage  and  pound- 
age continued  to  be  levied  by  prerogative.  The  duties 
were  increased.  By  delving  into  the  middle  ages  obso- 
lete rights  and  claims  of  the  crown  were  unearthed.  A 
large  and  peopled  district  was  claimed  as  royal  forest,  and 
juries  were  bullied  into  adjudging  it  to  the  crown,  not 
to  the  satisfaction  of  the  inhabitants  who  were  brought 
under  forest  law,  any  more  than  to  that  of  the  owners 
of  the  land.  Composition  for  knighthood,  now  obso- 
lete, was  revived.  Every  one  who  could  be  fined  for 
anything  was  fined.  A  land-owner  was  fined  for  depopu- 
lation if  he  had  pulled  down  a  cottage.  Monopolies  were 
another  source  of  unconstitutional  revenue.  "  Unjust  pro- 
jects," says  Clarendon,  "of  all  kinds,  many  ridiculous, 
many  scandalous,  all  very  grievous,  were  set  on  foot." 
The  government  stooped  to  exactions  which  were  little 
better  than  blackmail.  But  the  climax  was  ship-money. 
A  tribute,  dating  from  the  times  of  Danish  invasion, 
which  had  before  been  exacted  from  the  seaports,  was 
now  exacted  from  the  country  at  large.  Not  once  only 
but  five  times%  the  writs  went  out.  The  issue  of  such 
a  series  showed  that  the  plea  of  emergency  had  been 
dropped,  and  that  ship-money  was  to  be  a  permanent 
tax  levied  without  the  assent  of  parliament. 
1635  Hampden,  a  Buckinghamshire  gentleman,  stood  forth 
and  refused  to  pay  the  tax.  There  was  a  long  and  ever- 
memorable  argument  before  the  whole  bench  of  judges. 
By  this  time  the  judges,  holding  office  as  they  did  during 
the  pleasure  of  the  crown,  had  been  pretty  well  reduced  to 
the  condition  of  lions  beneath  the  throne.  One  of  them, 
Heath,  had  been  dismissed,  most  likely  on  political  grounds. 
Clarendon,  high  royalist  as  he  is,  deplores  their  debase- 


xxi  CHARLES   I  493 

ment.  It  is  wonderful,  and  shows  the  influence  of  pro- 
fessional conscience  and  of  care  for  professional  reputation, 
that  they  should  not  have  been  unanimous  in  their  judg- 
ment for  the  crown.  Hampden  was  condemned  to  pay, 
but  of  him  the  king  had  not  heard  the  last.  More  famous 
though  not  more  deserving  of  fame  than  Bate  or  Chambers, 
he  stands  in  history  the  type  of  a  character  which  England 
has  failed  fully  to  transmit,  as  she  has  failed  fully  to  trans- 
mit political  independence  generally,  to  her  offspring  in 
the  new  world.  The  logic  of  the  judges,  Clarendon  says, 
and,  he  might  have  added,  that  of  the  crown  lawyers, 
left  no  man  anything  that  he  might  call  his  own.  Chief 
Justice  Finch  outvied  the  rest  of  the  bench  and  even  the 
crown  lawyers  in  exaltation  of  the  prerogative. 

The  country  meanwhile  was  prosperous.  Taxation, 
though  unconstitutional,  was  not  heavier  than  constitu- 
tional taxation  had  been.  Monopolies  were  galling,  that 
of  soap  especially,  but  not  unbearable.  Tonnage  and 
poundage  when  levied  by  prerogative  were  not  more 
onerous  than  when  levied  by  law.  Fines  for  refusal 
of  knighthood  touched  only  a  few,  and  those  chiefly  of 
the  wealthier  sort.  Afforestations  were  local.  The  en- 
croachments of  prerogative  were  masked  by  law,  to  which, 
though  delivered  by  servile  judges,  the  mass  of  the  people 
would  submit.  The  government  was  not  inactive  in  ma- 
terial improvement ;  it  set  up  a  letter  post,  made  sanitary 
regulations,  undertook  the  draining  of  fens.  The  legal 
profession  generally  was  on  the  king's  side.  So,  of 
course,  were  the  clergy.  If  the  crown  had  no  standing 
army,  the  patriotic  opposition  had  no  means  of  forming  a 
front,  and  the  crown  could  raise  troops  at  any  moment, 
while  the  opposition  could  not.  In  the  county  and  the 


494  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAV. 

borough  freedom  still  had  ramparts;  otherwise"  in  the 
political  region  there  seems  to  have  been  nothing  to  pre- 
vent the  government  from  gradually  establishing  itself 
on  a  basis  independent  of  parliament.  Had  Straff  ord  in- 
stead of  Laud  been  at  the  centre  of  affairs,  the  course  of 
English  history  might  have  been  changed.  But  Straff ord 
was  too  great  for  Charles,  and  his  reforms,  however  they 
might  please  Laud,  pleased  not  courtiers  or  the  queen. 
To  bid  the  courtiers  support  a  minister  in  doing  away  with 
corruption  in  order  to  save  the  government  was  to  bid  them 
give  up  that  which  made  the  government  worth  saving. 

The  government,  Buckingham's  insane  desire  of  shin- 
ing on  the  continental  field  having  ceased  to  animate  it, 
had  staunched  one  source  of  expenditure  by  keeping 
pretty  well  at  peace.  The  king's  only  definite  object  in 
his  continental  policy  was  the  family  one  of  recovering 
the  Palatinate.  This  he  sought  without  regard  to  any 
great  cause,  or  to  the  religious  character  of  any  power 
which  for  the  time  being  he  thought  likely  to  help  him 
to  his  end.  The  deep  of  the  Simancas  archives  has  given 
up  the  fact  that  in  order  to  obtain  Spanish  aid  he  was 
ready  to  enter  into  a  league  with  Spain  for  the  dismem- 
berment of  the  independent  Netherlands.  He  wove  over 
the  whole  of  Europe  a  tangled  web  of  self-contradictory 
and  futile  diplomacy,  earning  the  contempt  of  all  the 
powers  by  affecting  to  dominate  without  force,  and  show- 
ing how  feeble  is  the  voice  of  the  ambassador  when  un- 
seconded  by  the  voice  of  the  cannon.  His  own  leaning 
was  to  connection  with  the  great  catholic  monarchies. 
From  the  Dutch,  the  natural  allies  of  England,  he  and 
his  bishops  shrank  as  from  Calvinists  and  republicans, 
though  in  the  Stadtholderate  monarchy  had  a  compeer. 


xxi  CHARLES   I  495 

In  Germany  up  to  this  time  everything  had  been 
going  down  before  the  Imperial  and  catholic  generals, 
Wallenstein  and  Tilly.  Last  of  all  the  king  of  Den- 
mark had  sunk  before  Tilly  at  Lutter.  At  length,  like  !626 
a  meteor  from  the  north,  Gustavus  Adolphus  descends 
upon  the  scene  and  turns  the  day  in  favour  of  the  pro-  1632 
testant  cause.  All  protestant  hearts  in  England  leap  with 
joy.  Whether  the  hearts  of  the  court  did  may  be  doubted. 
But  at  all  events  Charles  was  quit  of  the  business  at  the 
price  of  sending  a  few  volunteers  and  a  little  money ;  and 
his  finances  were  thus  spared. 

Not  the  political  but  the  ecclesiastical  sphere  was  the 
destined  scene  of  the  fatal  crisis.  The  civil  war  which  is 
coming  was  truly  named  the  Bishops'  War ;  the  strongest 
force  and  the  prevailing  character  of  the  revolution  were 
religious ;  the  dictator  who  emerged  from  it  was  the  mili- 
tary chief  of  a  religious  party.  Anglicanism  and  Puritan- 
ism yoked  by  the  political  compromise  could  not  draw 
together.  Anglicanism  was  and  is  hierarchical,  sacerdotal, 
sacramental,  ritualistic.  Puritanism  was  the  reverse  of  all 
these.  Anglicanism  was  Arminian,  holding  the  doctrine 
of  free  will,  which  let  in  good  works  and  the  agency  of 
the  church,  that  is,  of  the  clergy.  Puritanism  was  Cal- 
vinistic,  admitting  no  influence  on  the  soul  but  that  of 
God.  The  great  ordinances  of  Anglicanism  were  the  sac- 
raments. The  great  ordinance  of  Puritanism  was  preach- 
ing. Anglican  worship  was  liturgical ;  that  of  Puritanism 
was  not.  Anglicanism  put  the  communion  table  at  the 
east  end  of  the  church,  treating  it  as  an  altar,  and  re- 
ceived the  communion  kneeling.  Puritanism  put  the 
table  in  the  middle  of  the  church  to  show  that  it  was 
not  an  altar,  and  received  the  communion  sitting.  On 


496  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

this  question  as  to  the  position  of  the  table  and  the 
posture  of  the  communicant,  the  two  parties  came  into 
palpable  collision.  The  Puritan  freely  used  the  table, 
so  sacred  in  Anglican  eyes,  for  secular  purposes.  He 
treated  the  church  chiefly  as  a  preaching  house ;  left  it 
often  in  a  slatternly  state,  disgusting  to  the  Anglican, 
and  disfigured  it  with  pews,  huge  if  he  was  a  person  of 
quality,  while  he  smashed  the  painted  windows  and  the 
images  of  saints  which  Anglicans  loved  more  than  they 
cared  to  say.  The  Puritan  kept  no  saints'  days,  abhorring 
them  as  human  inventions;  but  he  religiously  kept  or 
tried  to  keep  the  Jewish  Sabbath.  The  Anglican  kept 
saints'  days,  while  he  practised  archery,  played  games, 
and  danced  on  the  green  on  the  Sunday  afternoon.  May- 
poles and  Christmas  festivities,  the  delight  of  the  Angli- 
can, were  the  detestation  of  the  Puritan.  In  manners, 
and  to  some  extent  even  in  dress,  the  two  sects  were 
opposed  to  each  other;  the  Anglican  or  the  Cavalier,  as 
he  came  presently  to  be  called,  being  free  and  jovial,  often 
to  excess ;  the  Puritan,  strict  and  severe.  The  Anglican 
loved  stage  plays,  which  the  Puritan  reprobated,  not  with- 
out plausible  reasons,  as  is  shown  by  the  comic  scenes  of 
Massinger  and  other  playwrights,  to  which  probably  cor- 
responded too  often  the  conversation  of  the  players. 

Not  that  the  leading  Puritans  were  crop-eared  and  sour- 
visaged  fanatics,  however  much  of  that  sort  there  might 
be  in  the  lower  sections  of  the  party.  Colonel  Hutchin- 
son  is  painted  by  his  wife,  who,  if  she  is  partial  in  her 
description  of  her  husband  at  all  events  gives  us  the  Puri- 
tan ideal,  as  a  perfect  gentleman,  highly  accomplished, 
skilled  in  manly  exercises,  polished  in  manners,  and  cour- 
teous to  all,  as  well  as  deeply  religious,  strictly  pure,  and 


xxi  CHARLES   I  497 

exemplary  in  performance  of  all  the  duties  of  life.  There 
was  certainly  not  less  of  the  "humanities,"  as  classical 
culture  was  called,  on  the  side  of  the  Puritan  than  on  that 
of  his  opponent.  Nor  did  the  Puritan  gentleman  differ 
from  the  Cavalier  in  costume,  except  that  his  dress  v,as 
more  sober.  That  he  was  not  crop-eared,  but  wore  long 
locks,  is  shown  by  the  portraits  of  the  time.  The  London 
apprentices  were  cropped,  and  the  nickname  of  Round- 
heads was  extended  from  them  to  the  party.  Milton  com- 
bines with  Puritanism  and  the  political  republicanism  to 
which  it  tended,  the  utmost  graces  of  the  Renaissance  and 
of  classical  culture.  He  had  a  heart  even  for  the  high- 
embowered  roof  with  its  antic  pillars  ;  for  the  storied 
windows,  richly  dight ;  for  the  dim  religious  light  which 
they  cast ;  for  the  pealing  organ  and  the  full-voiced  choir. 
The  author  of  "Cornus"  did  not  reprobate,  though  he 
purified,  the  stage.  That  Milton  should  have  taken  the 
Puritan  side  is  strong  proof  that  it  was  the  side,  not  only 
of  protestantism  and  liberty,  but  of  intellectual  and  moral 
aspiration.  Our  best  reason  for  sympathizing  with  the 
Puritan  and  parliamentary  cause  in  the  coming  battle  is 
that  in  that  camp  on  the  whole  were  the  most  powerful  and 
enlightened  minds  and  the  noblest  characters  of  the  day. 
Puritan  was  in  fact  another  name  for  protestant.  It 
meant  practically  the  man  whose  rule  of  faith  was  in  the 
Bible,  while  the  catholic's  rule  of  faith  was  in  the  church. 
But  what  was  the  Bible  ?  All  the  sacred  books  of  the 
Jews  collected  and  bound  up  as  one  with  the  history  and 
words  of  Jesus,  whom  the  Jews  slew  as  a  subverter  of 
their  religion,  and  with  the  history  and  words  of  his  dis- 
ciples. In  the  New  Testament  the  Puritans  would  find, 
in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  precepts  of  meekness,  hu- 
VOL.  i  —  32 


498  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

inility,  forgiveness  of  injuries ;  of  forgetfulness  of  self, 
of  benevolence  without  bounds.  They  would  find  a  total 
disregard  of  the  things  of  this  world.  They  would  find 
perfect  equality  in  Christ,  the  universal  Fatherhood  of 
God,  the  universal  brotherhood  of  man.  They  would 
find  a  God  of  love  and  mercy.  In  the  Old  Testament 
they  would  find  righteousness,  purity,  worship  of  one 
God,  hatred  of  idols.  But  they  would  find  a  God  differ- 
ent in  aspect  from  the  God  of  the  New  Testament,  a 
jealous  God,  a  God  of  vengeance,  a  God  who  visited  the 
sins  of  the  fathers  upon  the  children  unto  the  third  and 
fourth  generation.  They  would  find  a  chosen  race  with 
its  covenant  of  circumcision  and  its  tribal  law.  They 
would  find  the  Canaanites,  without  regard  for  age  or 
sex,  smitten  with  the  sword  and  their  land  given  by  a 
partial  God  to  the  chosen  race.  In  the  stories  of  Sisera 
and  Agag  they  would  find  not  only  mercy,  but  morality, 
sacrificed  to  religious  zeal.  They  would  find  witchcraft 
punished  with  death.  They  would  find  disobedience  to 
parents  punished  with  death.  They  would  find  slavery 
recognized  as  lawful,  though  in  a  comparatively  mild 
form.  Nor  had  they  any  philosophy  of  history  to  teach 
them  that  these  things  were  all  primeval  and  had  passed 
away.  They  would  find  much  to  suggest  that  the  saints 
were  to  inherit  the  earth,  and  that  sinners,  above  all  here- 
tics and  blasphemers,  were  to  be  summarily  despatched  to 
hell.  The  common  minds  among  them,  especially  in  a 
time  of  civil  strife,  would  find  the  precepts  of  the  Old 
Testament  more  easy  of  fulfilment,  and  its  examples  more 
easy  of  imitation,  than  the  precepts  and  the  example  of 
Jesus.  In  most  of  them  there  would  be  a  curiously  mixed 
character,  the  two  Testaments  mingling  and  contending 


xxt  CHARLES   I  499 

with  each  other,  and  the  Old  Testament  generally  pre- 
vailing over  the  New. 

The  common  Puritan  of  the  middle  class  has  painted 
himself  in  the  historical  reminiscences  of  Nehemiah  Wall- 
ington.  Nehemiah  lives  in  an  Old  Testament  atmosphere 
of  special  providences  and  divine  judgments.  He  sees 
strange  apparitions  in  the  air  and  fancies  that  God  turns 
bullets.  He  is  capable  of  believing  that  when  a  husband- 
man ploughed  on  the  Sabbath,  the  iron  with  which  he 
cleaned  his  plough  stuck  to  his  hand  and  could  not  be 
got  out  for  two  years.  He  is  an  intense  Sabbatarian  and 
a  bitter  enemy  of  organs  and  May-poles.  He  everywhere 
scents  popery  and  popish  plots  against  the  people  of  God. 
If  he  gets  the  upper  hand,  compulsory  piety,  with  hypoc- 
risy in  its  train,  sanguinary  laws  against  heresy  and  blas- 
phemy, execution  of  popish  priests,  burning  of  witches, 
suppression  of  natural  pleasures  and  of  the  harmless  gaiety 
of  life,  breeding  inward  vice,  are  too  likely  to  be  the  order 
of  the  day.  Against  Nehemiah  Wellington  there  is  not 
a  little  to  be  said  for  Laud. 

All  England,  however,  was  not  Laudian  or  Puritan. 
Between  the  two  great  religious  parties,  philosophically 
above  them  both,  were  the  Liberals,  such  as  Hales,  Chil- 
lingworth,  Falkland,  and  the  intellectual  group  for  which 
Falkland  kept  open  house  at  Great  Tew,  precursors  of 
the  Cambridge  Platonists  and  of  the  Broad  Churchmen 
of  our  own  day.  These  men  sought  unity,  not  in  a  com- 
pulsory rule  of  any  kind,  but  in  freedom  and  charity. 
Unfortunately  the  hour  of  freedom  and  charity  was  not 
come,  and  the  feeble  band  of  their  votaries  was  crushed, 
in  the  collision  of  the  two  great  adverse  masses  of 
opinion. 


600  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

Nor  were  the  clergy  of  the  church  of  England,  or  even 
its  bishops,  all  Laudian.  Bishop  Usher,  whose  learning 
and  character  everybody  deeply  respected,  was  for  a 
limited  episcopacy  without  pretence  to  divine  right,  mid- 
way between  the  Anglican  polity  and  that  of  the  Presby- 
terians. He  had  Laud's  old  antagonist,  Williams,  more 
politician  than  ecclesiastic,  able  and  acute  as  well  as 
aspiring,  though  wanting  in  character  and  ballast,  on 
his  side.  An  Usherian  episcopate  with  exclusion  of  the 
bishops  and  clergy  from  secular  office  or  power  would 
have  satisfied  a  large  portion  of  the  respectable  and  serious 
laity.  But  the  avalanche  of  revolution  once  set  rolling, 
moderate  counsels  seldom  arrest  its  course. 

Calvinism,  it  is  necessary  to  remember,  had  been  the 
doctrine  of  the  English  Reformation,  and  was  at  this  time 
the  established  creed  of  the  political  classes,  the  gentry 
and  the  burghers.  Arminianism  and  the  Catholicism 
which  came  in  its  train,  though  reactionary,  presented 
themselves  as  innovations,  and  were  resisted  by  the  con- 
servatism of  the  nation,  till  Puritanism,  by  assailing 
episcopacy  and  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer,  aroused 
conservative  feeling  on  the  other  side. 

1635  Armed  with  the  power  of  his  archbishopric,  and  having 
the  crown,  the  privy  council,  the  star  chamber,  and  the 
ecclesiastical  court  of  high  commission  at  his  back,  Laud 
at  once  set  about  the  suppression  of  Puritanism.  He  car- 
ried the  table  back  to  the  east  end,  cleansed  and  renovated 
the  churches,  forced  the  communicants  to  kneel,  arrested 
iconoclasm,  revived  the  ritual,  and  restored  the  clerical 
•  costumes,  which  he  deemed  the  beauty  of  holiness.  He 
set  a  striking  example  of  ritualism,  and  one  which  gave 
special  umbrage,  by  his  ceremonies  and  genuflexions 


xxi  CHARLES   I  501 

in  the  consecration  of  the  church  of  St.  Catherine  Cree.  1631 
The  bishops,  now  mostly  of  his  school,  were  set  at  work 
to  enforce  conformity,  which  they  did  with  zeal,  to  the 
general  irritation  of  the  people,  who,  now  used  to  Puritan 
ways,  regarded  ceremonial  and  even  reverence  as  return 
to  Rome.  The  Puritans  had  set  up  a  preaching  estab- 
lishment of  their  own,  supported  by  a  fund  in  the  hands 
of  a  board  of  trustees,  like  the  Simeon  trustees  of  a  later 
time,  that,  while  they  formally  attended  the  unsavoury 
performance  of  the  state  liturgy,  they  might  hear  the 
savoury  preaching  of  the  Word  in  their  own  way.  These 
preachers  Laud  put  down.  To  flout  the  Puritan  Sabbath, 
the  Book  of  Sports  encouraged  Sunday  games.  The  con-  1633 
gregations  of  protestant  refugees  from  the  continent, 
which  had  hitherto  been  allowed  their  own  worship,  were 
now  broken  up.  This  was  the  work  of  Archbishop  Neile, 
court-sycophant  and  heretic-burner  of  the  last  reign,  a 
sinister  figure  at  Laud's  side.  Even  to  the  chaplaincies  of 
English  regiments  in  the  Dutch  service,  Laud's  martinet 
rule  was  extended.  Those,  mostly  peasants,  who  persisted 
in  their  free  worship,  with  a  Puritan  clergyman  at  their 
head,  were  hunted  down  by  the  magistrates  and  pur- 
suivants. Some  of  them  fled  first  to  Holland,  then  to 
New  England,  where,  children  of  a  grand  destiny,  they 
founded  a  religious  community  beyond  the  Atlantic. 

Suspicions  of  a  design  to  lead  England  back  to  Rome 
widely  prevailed.  Nor  were  they  devoid  of  foundation. 
Certainly  the  suspicion  of  a  tendency  was  not.  What 
Laud  himself  wanted  was  probably  to  be  a  Lambeth 
pope.  He  had  waged  controversial  war  against  the  Jes- 
uits, and  when  one  who  professed  to  speak  for  the 
pope  offered  him  a  cardinal's  hat,  he  had  put  the  offer 


602  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

aside,  not,  it  is  true,  in  a  very  peremptory  manner,  saying 
that  "something  dwelt  within  him  which  would  not  suffer 
that  till  Rome  were  other  than  she  was."  Perhaps  he 
might  not  have  been  unwilling  to  treat  on  an  equality 
with  Rome  if  it  had  been  possible  for  Rome  to  treat.  His 
suffragan  and  associate,  Bishop  Montague,  declared  at 
last  for  union  with  the  papacy,  and  if  Panzani,  the  papal 
envoy,  spoke  truth,  expressed  his  belief  that  Laud,  though 
more  cautious,  was  of  the  same  mind.  But  whatever  the 
archbishop's  aim  might  be,  sacerdotalism,  sacramentalism, 
and  ritualism  could  hardly  fail  to  draw  men  to  the  place 
to  which  those  principles  belonged.  Conversions  to  Rome 
were  numerous,  not  only  among  weak  women  of  fashion, 
caught  by  ritual,  incense,  artificial  flowers,  and  the  fasci- 
nation of  Jesuit  directors,  but  among  men  of  the  world 
and  ministers  of  state,  including  no  less  than  four  privy 
councillors.  Bishop  Montague,  it  seems,  would  have  gone 
over  if  Rome  could  have  entertained  his  stipulation  for 
the  recognition  of  his  orders,  to  which  she  of  course  said 
then,  as  she  says  now,  non  possumus.  Bishop  Goodman 
was  believed  to  be  an  actual  convert,  though  he  retained 
his  see.  Worship  of  Mary  began  to  creep  into  Anglican 
devotion,  and  there  was  an  incipient  revival  of  monasti- 
cism,  though  in  an  Anglican  version.  Panzani,  visiting 
England,  found  that  he  was  a  centre  of  attraction  and  that 
the  outlook  for  his  cause  was  hopeful.  The  queen  and 
her  little  circle  plied  all  their  arts,  and  formed  a  magnet 
for  secession.  This  drama  has  been  acted  over  again  in 
our  own  day.  Again  we  have  been  told  that  Anglican 
ritualism  is  the  true  antidote  to  Romanism ;  and  again 
Anglican  ritualism  has  sent  a  bevy  of  converts  over  to 
Rome.  Besides,  if  sacerdotalism,  sacramentalism,  and 


xxi  CHARLES   I  503 

ritualism  were  to  prevail,  would  it  signify  whether  they 
were  Anglican  or  Roman?  That  Lambeth  was  nearer 
than  Rome  would  not  make  its  yoke  less  oppressive. 
Nor  would  protestants  of  that  day  be  made  less  sensitive 
by  seeing  that  the  fortunes  of  their  cause  over  Europe 
were  declining  and  a  catholic  reaction  had  set  in.  The 
Reformation  had  run  its  course  of  demolition ;  the  work 
of  reconstruction  was  not  so  easy.  Dissension  prevailed; 
sects  multiplied,  controversy  raged,  fanaticism  and  anar- 
chism disgraced  the  cause.  The  catholic  church  presented 
unity,  authority,  and  peace  to  the  troubled  in  mind.  To 
monarchs  and  monarchical  statesmen  she  presented  her- 
self as  the  ally  of  political  order.  To  the  cultured  she 
offered  antiquity,  majesty,  and  art. 

There  was  as  yet  no  legal  censorship  of  the  press,  but 
the  government,  as  the  self-constituted  guardian  of  the 
public  mind,  had  assumed  the  censorship  and  now  pro- 
hibited Puritan  publications.  Illicit  publications  of  ex- 
treme violence  were  the  natural  result.  For  writings  of 
violence  certainly  extreme  against  Laud  and  his  system, 
Burton,  a  clergyman,  Bastwick,  a  physician,  and  Prynne, 
a  lawyer,  representing  among  them  the  three  great  pro- 
fessions, were  brought  before  the  council.  Prynne,  a  1633 
prodigy  of  dry  legal  erudition,  a  bitter  Puritan,  and  a  most 
indomitable  controversialist,  twice  incurred  the  censorial 
wrath,  once  by  a  supposed  aspersion  on  the  character  of 
the  queen,  who  had  taken  part  in  an  unhallowed  masque. 
The  punishments  of  these  men,  meted  out  by  those  whom 
they  were  accused  of  libelling,  were  scourging,  pillorying, 
cutting  off  of  ears,  branding,  and  finally  imprisonment  in 
remote  and  lonely  dungeons.  John  Lilburne,  charged  1638 
with  printing  and  circulating  Prynne's  and  other  unli- 


504  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

censed  writings,  suffered  the  same  punishments  and  was 
barbarously  treated  in  prison.     If  Leighton,  another  vic- 

1630  tim,  jg  ^0  be  believed  the  bishops  were  for  the  severest 
sentence,  and  when  judgment  had  been  pronounced  Laud 
took  off  his  cap,  lifted  up  his  hands,  and  thanked  God, 
who  had  given  him  the  victory  over  his  enemies.  Our 
indignation  at  Anglican  inhumanity  must  be  tempered  by 
our  recollection  of  Puritan  inhumanity  in  the  case  of 
Floyd ;  and  that  case  was  not  unique. 

Puritan  resentment  was  bitter.  Apart  from  Puritanism, 
also,  there  was  the  general  hatred  of  clerical  meddling 
and  domination  which  had  manifested  itself  at  other 
times.  But  there  were  no  means  of  organizing  a  com- 
bined resistance.  Everywhere  the  government  had  its 
officers  and  satellites.  It  could  at  once  have  raised  or 
imported  force  enough  to  put  down  a  rising,  while  its 
enemies  were  unarmed.  Nor  was  there  any  newspaper 
press  or  quick  postal  communication  to  give  unity  to  dis- 
affection. The  bishops  reported  to  Laud  that  conformity 
was  almost  universal.  There  was  but  little  work  for  the 
High  Commission.  But  in  an  evil  hour  for  himself  Laud 
resolved  to  extend  uniformity  and  impart  his  beauty  of 
holiness  to  Scotland.  Here  he  came  into  collision  with 
a  united  and  almost  unanimously  hostile  nation,  whose 
patriotism,  moreover,  since  the  transfer  of  the  political 
centre  to  England,  had  assumed  a  specially  religious 
form.  James  had  succeeded  in  discrowning  the  Presby- 
terian theocracy,  the  political  tendencies  of  which  he  with 
good  reason  suspected,  while  he  had  suffered  under  its 
long  sermons,  its  extemporaneous  prayers,  and  the  un- 

1618  courtly  homilies  of  its  ministers.  He  had  restored  epis- 
copacy. In  this  he  had  been  supported  by  the  nobles, 


505 

who  were  tired  of  ministerial  domination,  and  by  a  reac- 
tion against  Presbyterian  narrowness  and  violence,  of 
which  the  focus  was  the  University  of  Aberdeen.  But 
the  old  king  knew  the  Scotch  too  well  to  attempt  to  force 
upon  them  an  English  liturgy.  This  Laud  attempted. 
The  result  of  his  attempt  was  resistance  fierce  and  gen- 
eral. The  liturgy  was  doubly  hateful  to  the  Scotch 
people ;  in  itself  as  a  return  to  popery,  and  because  it  was 
imposed  by  England.  A  dress  performance  of  it  in  St. 
Giles's  Kirk  at  Edinburgh  gave  rise  to  a  riot,  with  strong  1637 
Scotch  language  and  flinging  of  stools.  Scotland  blazed 
out  into  resistance,  into  rebellion.  There  followed  a  revo- 
lutionary convention  of  the  four  estates ;  nobles,  clergy, 
land-owning  gentry,  and  burghers,  under  the  title  of  the 
Four  Tables.  Charles  had  already  set  the  nobles  against 
him  by  forcing  them,  righteously  enough,  to  disgorge 
some  of  the  plunder  of  the  Kirk,  as  well  as  by  putting 
ecclesiastics  over  their  heads  into  the  offices  of  state.  A 
Solemn  League  and  Covenant  was  framed  and  signed  1638 
with  enthusiasm  by  people  of  all  classes.  At  Edinburgh 
it  was  laid  out  on  a  tombstone  in  the  Grey  Friars  church- 
yard, while  multitudes  pressed  round  to  sign  with  tears  in 
their  eyes.  Those  who  put  their  hands  to  it  "professed, 
and  before  God,  his  angels,  and  the  world,  solemnly  de- 
clared with  their  whole  hearts  that  they  agreed  and 
resolved  all  the  days  of  their  life  constantly  to  adhere 
unto  and  to  defend  the  foresaid  true  religion ;  and  for- 
bearing the  practice  of  all  novations  already  introduced 
in  the  matters  of  the  worship  of  God,  or  approbation  of 
the  corruptions  of  the  public  government  of  the  Kirk,  or 
civil  places  and  powers  of  Kirkmen  till  they  had  been 
tried  and  allowed  in  the  assemblies  and  in  parliaments, 


506  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

to  labour  by  all  means  lawful  to  recover  the  purity  and 
liberty  of  the  Gospel  as  it  was  established  and  professed 
before  the  foresaid  novations."  The  Covenanters  swore 
that  they  would  "  to  the  uttermost  of  their  power,  with 
their  means  and  lives,  stand  to  the  defence  of  their  dread 
sovereign,  the  king's  majesty,  his  personal  authority,  in 
the  defence  of  the  foresaid  true  religion,  liberties,  and 
laws  of  the  kingdom."  These  highly  loyal  rebels  always 
rebelled  against  the  king  in  the  king's  name.  Hamilton, 
who  managed  for  the  king  in  Scotland,  strove  to  stem 
or  to  divert  the  movement;  but  in  vain.  Being  mainly 
religious,  the  movement  presently  found  its  organ  in 
the  general  Assembly  of  the  church,  which,  however,  in- 
cluded a  large  lay  element.  By  revolutionary  acts  of 
1639  that  Assembly  episcopacy  was  swept  away,  and  the  Pres- 
byterian polity  was  restored.  Once  more  the  preachers 
took  the  lead,  with  the  great  preacher  of  the  day  at  their 
head.  After  Knox,  Andrew  Melville  had  judged  the 
Scottish  Israel.  Alexander  Henderson  now  judged  it  in 
his  turn.  Scotland  rose  up  against  Charles  a  revolution- 
ary and  theocratic  republic.  Its  political  leader  was 

| 

Argyle,  chief  of  the  greatest  of  the  Highland  clans,  but 
a  Lowland  and  Covenanting  politician,  the  deepest  and 
most  ambitious  of  that  class. 

The  Scotch  Covenant  had  at  once  a  blue-bonneted  army 
of  enthusiasm,  including  not  a  few  soldiers  trained  in  the 
German  wars,  and  some  who  had  fought  under  Gustavus. 
It  had  also  an  experienced  general  in  old  Alexander 
Leslie,  whom,  though  he  was  a  soldier  of  fortune,  the 
nobles  had  the  good  sense  to  obey.  Charles  had  no  army, 
he  had  no  general,  he  had  no  money.  London,  when  he 
appealed  to  her  for  money,  drew  her  purse  strings  tight. 


xxi  CHARLES   I  607 

Not  only  was  she  Puritan,  but  she  was  smarting  under  the 
sequestration  of  her  lands  in  the  north  of  Ireland  for  an 
alleged  breach  of  the  charter.  The  agitated  mind  of  the 
king  turned  to  Spain  for  aid.  But  though  a  king  he  was 
not  a  catholic,  and  Spanish  theologians  probably  drew  an 
impressive  moral  from  his  misfortunes.  Rome,  to  which 
the  queen  with  desperate  imprudence  was  allowed  to 
apply,  answered  that  much  might  be  done  for  the  king 
if  he  were  a  catholic.  Charles  could  only  call  out  the 
raw  militia  of  his  kingdom  by  the  exercise  of  his  feudal 
power.  Pay  or  feed  his  troops  he  could  not.  Conse- 
quently he  could  not  maintain  discipline  among  them. 
Their  hearts  were  not  with  him  in  the  quarrel ;  the  hearts 
of  many  of  them  were  against  him;  and  those  who  were 
indifferent  were  estranged  and  exasperated  by  being 
dragged  from  their  homes.  The  result,  after  a  march  to  1639 
the  border,  was  a  miserable  collapse  on  the  king's  side, 
followed  by  his  half  surrender  and  by  an  ambiguous 
treaty,  which  at  once  broke  down,  the  king  clinging  to 
the  hope  of.  one  day  restoring  episcopacy,  with  which 
Presbyterian  Scotland  was  determined  for  ever  to  do 
away.  Once  more  Scotland  threw  herself  into  an  atti- 
tude of  rebellion.  Charles,  in  his  extremity,  called  to  1640 
him  from  Ireland  his  one  thoroughly  able  man,  Went- 
worth,  and  gave  him  a  pledge  of  confidence,  before 
refused,  by  creating  him  Earl  of  Strafford.  By  Strafford's 
advice  he  convoked  parliament  and  appealed  to  it  for  sup-  1640 
plies  to  put  down  the  rebellion  in  Scotland.  The  Com- 
mons, under  the  guidance  of  Pym,  whose  experience  of 
parliament  enabled  him  to  step  into  the  leading  place, 
.replied  in  effect  that  they  would  grant  the  king  supplies 
if  he  would  recognize  their  supremacy  alike  in  church  and 


508  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

state,  and  conform  his  policy  to  their  will,  thereby  in 
effect  admitting  that  they  were  the  sovereign  power.  A 
Remonstrance  in  that  sense  was  framed  by  Pym.  Not 
yet  reduced  to  this  virtual  abdication,  Charles  dissolved 

1640  the  parliament  and  threw  some  of  its  bold  spirits  into 
prison.  Convocation  added  to  the  flame  by  continuing 
to  sit  after  the  dissolution  of  parliament,  voting  a  subsidy 
of  its  own,  and  passing,  as  a  counterblast  to  the  Scotch 

1640  Covenant,  canons  proclaiming  the  necessity  of  episcopacy 
and  the  divine  authority  of  kings.  Strafford,  his  temper 
perhaps  rendered  more  violent  by  gout,  breathed  war, 
and,  if  his  words  were  rightly  reported,  laid  it  down  in 
the  council  that  the  king,  by  the  refusal  of  parliament  to 
do  its  duty,  was  released  from  constitutional  restraints, 
and  at  liberty,  for  the  suppression  of  rebellion,  to  avail 
himself  of  any  means  in  his  power.  Desperate  expedients 
were  employed  to  raise  money ;  bullion  was  seized  in  the 
mint,  and  the  currency  was  debased.  By  this  time  the 
Puritan  leaders  in  England  had  opened  communications 

1640  with  Scotland,  and  the  ground  was  mined  beneath  the 
king's  feet.  A  second  expedition  against  the  Scotch 
ended  in  worse  disaster  than  the  first.  The  English  army 
refused  to  fight,  the  Scotch  in  their  turn  invaded  Eng- 
land, and  were  received  not  as  enemies,  but  as  allies. 
The  last  straw  at  which  the  king  caught  to  break  his 
now  inevitable  fall  was  an  assembly  of  the  peers,  called 

1640  in  the  old  form  of  the  Grand  Council,  which,  though  super- 
seded by  parliament,  still  remained  in  constitutional 
existence.  The  peers  could  in  the  upshot  advise  nothing 

1640  but  the  assembling  of  parliament.  Parliament  was  called. 
The  king  came  to  the  opening  not  in  his  usual  state  but 
humbly  in  his  barge  as  a  vanquished  man. 


xxi  CHARLES   I  509 

The  Long  Parliament  is  truly  so  called,  since  it  lived 
for  twenty  years,  though  part  of  the  time  in  a  state  of 
suspended  animation,  and  through  all  the  phases  of  a 
great  revolution.  It  may  be  said  to  have  carried  political 
England  finally  out  of  the  middle  ages. 

Imperfect  as  the  representation  was,  petty  boroughs 
being  controlled  by  the  crown,  while  important  towns 
were  unrepresented,  the  sentiment  of  the  hour  prevailed, 
as  it  did  in  the  election  of  the  parliament  which  carried 
the  Reform  Bill  of  1832.  When  the  House  of  Commons  1640 
met,  political  England,  that  is  to  say,  the  England  of  the 
land-owners,  the  yeomanry,  and  the  burghers,  was  there. 
The  peasantry  and  mechanics,  for  the  most  part,  appear 
to  Have  taken  little  interest  in  the  controversy,  and  when 
at  last  they  appeared  on  the  field  of  civil  war  it  was  in  the 
form  of  tumultuary  bodies  of  clubmen  rising  in  defence  of 
their  hearths  and  their  bread  against  disturbers  and  plun- 
derers of  both  parties.  This  was  not,  in  its  origin  at  least, 
a  democratic  revolution.  It  was  a  revolution  of  the  gentry 
and  the  middle  class.  Its  authors  could  defend  them- 
selves against  an  imputation  of  lawless  tendencies  by 
saying  that  it  was  not  likely  that  such  bodies  as  the 
two  Houses  of  Parliament,  filled  with  the  "nobility  and 
gentry  "  of  the  kingdom,  should  "  conspire  to  take  away 
the  law  by  which  they  enjoyed  their  estates,  were  pro- 
tected from  any  act  of  violence  and  power,  and  differenced 
from  the  meaner  sort  of  people  with  whom  otherwise  they 
would  be  but  fellow-servants." 

Looking  round  the  old  chapel  of  St.  Stephen,  where 
the  Commons  sat,  we  see  the  chiefs  of  the  parties,  actual 
or  eventual,  of  the  revolution.  There  is  Pym,  soon  ac- 
cepted once  more  as  the  leader,  King  Pym,  as  he  was 


510  THE   UNITED  KINGDOM  CHAP. 

presently  nicknamed,  to  whom  Clarendon  pays  the  com- 
pliment of  saying  that  he  was  "  the  most  popular  man  and 
the  most  able  to  do  hurt  that  had  lived  in  any  time." 
There  is  Pym's  second  self,  Hampden,  the  patriotic  oppo- 
nent of  ship-money,  of  whom  Clarendon  says  that  he  was 
"  of  the  most  discerning  spirit,  and  of  the  greatest  address 
and  insinuation  to  bring  anything  to  pass  that  he  desired 
of  that  time,  and  who  laid  the  design  deepest."  There  is 
Vane,  "  young  in  years,  but  in  sage  counsel  old,"  the  most 
advanced  of  liberals,  too  advanced  even  for  New  England, 
which  he  had  visited  and  disturbed.  There  is  Oliver  St. 
John,  an  enigmatic  figure,  nicknamed  the  "dark-lantern 
man"  of  his  party.  There  is  the  fiery  Strode,  who  had 
once  held  down  the  Speaker  in  his  chair  while  patriotic 
resolutions  were  being  passed.  There  is  the  highly  in- 
tellectual Fiennes,  with  Genevan  associations.  There  are 
representatives  of  Presbyterianism,  such  as  Denzil  Holies, 
Haselrig,  and  Stapleton,  who  in  the  course  of  the  revo- 
lution will  have  their  hour.  There  is  Falkland,  literary, 
refined,  the  centre  of  an  intellectual  and  liberal  circle, 
intensely  sensitive  and  impulsive,  who  will  go  into  civil 
war  "ingeminating  peace";  the  type  of  the  philosophic 
and  literary  liberals,  most  of  whom,  repelled  by  Puri- 
tan fanaticism,  will,  in  the  day  of  battle,  sadly  incline  to 
the  royalist  side.  There  is  Falkland's  friend  Hyde,  after- 
wards Lord  Clarendon,  mentor  of  royalty  and  royalist 
historian  that  is  to  be.  There  are  Digby  and  Culpepper, 
who,  with  Falkland  and  Hyde,  will  soon  pass  over  to 
the  reaction.  There  are  the  great  constitutional  lawyers, 
Selden,  Whitelock,  Maynard,  and  Glyn,  whose  views  and 
aims,  as  political  reformers,  are  bounded  by  the  law.  In 
this  assembly  are  no  Jacobins;  hardly  even  Girondists. 


xxi  CHARLES  I  511 

Politically  the  most  extreme  man  among  them  is  Henry 
Marten,  a  republican,  not  of  the  Puritan,  but  of  the 
Roman  stamp. 

In  religion  the  extreme  man  is  Oliver  Cromwell,  who  re- 
presents the  Independents  in  virtual,  though  not  yet  avowed, 
secession  from  the  Anglican  establishment.  Cromwell  is 
one  of  the  members  for  Cambridge,  in  the  eastern  district, 
which  is  strongly  Puritan.  He  is,  in  his  own  phrase,  a 
gentleman,  one  of  the  younger  branch  of  a  family  which 
had  derived  its  wealth  from  the  confiscation  of  the  monas- 
teries, and  a  relative  of  Hampden.  He  has  been  at  a  clas- 
sical school,  at  Cambridge,  at  an  Inn  of  Court.  He  is 
passionately  religious,  after  having  been,  as  he  fancies, 
the  chief  of  sinners,  but  endowed  at  the  same  time  with 
practical  capacity,  which  makes  itself  felt  from  the  first, 
in  spite  of  his  uncouth  garb  and  total  want  of  grace  and 
fluency  as  a  speaker.  Sir  Philip  Warwick  sees  him  in  "  a 
plain  cloth  suit,  which  seemed  to  have  been  made  by  an 
ill  country  tailor,  linen  plain  and  not  very  clean,  a  speck 
or  two  of  blood  upon  his  band,  which  was  unfashionably 
small,  and  a  hat  without  a  hat-band."  "His  stature," 
Warwick  says,  "was  good;  his  countenance  swollen  and 
reddish ;  his  voice  sharp  and  untunable ;  and  his  elo- 
quence full  of  fervour."  Cromwell's  eloquence,  there- 
after to  be  heard,  was  the  thunder  of  victory.  Warwick 
as  a  fine  gentleman  was  scandalized  at  the  attention  paid 
to  such  a  speaker. 

In  the  House  of  Lords,  too,  there  are  notable  men. 
A  majority  of  the  peers  were  Stuart  creations,  some  of 
them  for  cash.  But  cash  was  not  court  favour,  and  the 
peers,  though  they  had  long  lost  their  feudal  indepen- 
dence, had  acquired  a  certain  independence  of  assured  rank, 


512  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

wealth,  and  dignity.  The  House  was  conservative,  of 
course,  and  already  under  the  Stuart  parliaments  there  had 
been  murmurings  at  their  lukewarmness  in  the  patriotic 
cause.  Yet  they  had  among  them  Puritans  and  reformers 
of  mark,  such  as  Bedford,  Saye  and  Sele,  Brooke,  or  Essex 
and  Kimbolton,  afterwards  Manchester,  the  parliamentary 
generals  that  were  to  be.  It  was  an  age  in  which  religious 
enthusiasm  lifted  men  above  rank  and  wealth. 

London,  the  place  of  meeting,  is  Puritan  and  hostile  to 
the  court.  The  royalist  historian  calls  it  the  sink  of  all 
the  ill  humours  of  the  kingdom.  In  this  as  in  the  French 
Revolution  the  patriotism  of  the  Assembly  has  the  street 
on  its  side,  and  sometimes  brings  mob  intimidation  to 
bear.  The  London  apprentices  especially  were  always 
ready  for  a  fray.  The  device  of  petitioning  is  also  called 
into  play,  as  Clarendon  avers,  and  the  art  must  have  been 
already  far  advanced,  if  names  which  had  been  signed  to 
a  mild  petition  were  cut  off  and  appended  to  a  stronger. 

The  line  of  cleavage  between  the  parties  in  the  Long 
Parliament,  on  which  separation  in  the  end  will  take 
place,  is  religious ;  it  is  the  line  between  episcopacy  and 
the  Prayer  Book  as  by  law  established,  on  the  one  side, 
and  Presbyterianism  or  Congregationalism  on  the  other. 

Scotch  commissioners  are  there  to  treat  for  peace,  ar- 
range a  pecuniary  indemnity,  and  at  the  same  time  sup- 
port the  Puritan  cause ;  while  the  Scotch  army  encamped 
in  England  affords  its  moral  support  to  its  English  friends. 

Of  the  four  hundred  and  ninety-three  members  who  had 
sat  in  the  Short  Parliament,  two  hundred  and  ninety-four 
were  returned  again.  But  men  who  before  had  spoken  of 
moderate  remedies  now  talked  in  another  strain.  Pym 
told  Hyde  that  they  must  be  of  another  temper  than  they 


xxi  CHARLES    I  513 

were  in  the  last  parliament;  that  they  must  not  only 
sweep  the  House  clean  below,  but  must  pull  down  all 
the  cobwebs  which  hung  in  the  top  and  corners,  that 
they  might  not  breed  dust  and  so  make  a  foul  House 
hereafter;  that  they  had  now  an  opportunity  to  make 
their  country  happy  by  removing  all  grievances  and  pull- 
ing up  the  causes  of  them  by  the  roots,  if  'all  men  would 
do  their  duties.  Whence  Hyde  inferred  that  "  the  warmest 
and  boldest  counsels  and  overtures  would  find  a  much  bet- 
ter reception  than  those  of  more  temperate  allay."  Yet 
these  men  came  in  a  spirit  which  could  hardly  be  called 
revolutionary,  since  their  object  was,  not  like  that  of  the 
French  Revolutionists,  to  break  with  the  past  and  make  a 
new  world,  but  to  put  a  stop  to  what  they  deemed  innova- 
tion, above  all  to  Romanist  innovation,  on  the  part  of  the 
king  and  his  advisers. 

Charles  had  called  to  him  Stratford.  The  earl  knew 
his  danger ;  but  the  king  had  pledged  to  him  the  royal 
word  that  not  a  hair  of  his  head  should  be  touched.  He 
came,  foiled,  broken  by  disease,  yet  still  resolute,  prepared 
to  act  on  the  aggressive,  perhaps  to  arraign  the  leaders 
of  the  Commons  for  treasonable  correspondence  with  the 
Scotch.  But  he  had  to  deal,  in  his  friend  and  coadjutor 
of  former  days,  with  no  mere  rhetorician,  but  with  a  man 
of  action  as  sagacious  and  as  intrepid  as  himself.  Pym  at 
once  struck  a  blow  which  proved  him  a  master  of  revolu-  1640 
tion.  Announcing  to  the  Commons  that  he  had  weighty 
matter  to  impart,  he  moved  that  the  doors  should  be 
closed.  When  they  were  opened,  he  carried  up  to  the 
Lords  the  impeachment  of  the  Earl  of  Strafford.  The 
earl  came  down  to  the  House  of  Lords  that  day  with  his 
brow  of  imperial  gloom,  his  impetuous  step,  his  tones  and 

VOL.  1  —  33 


514  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

gestures  of  command;  but  scarcely  had  he  entered  the 
House  when  he  found  that  power  had  departed  from 
him;  and  the  terrible  minister  of  government  by  pre- 
rogative went  away  a  fallen  man,  none  unbonneting  to 
him,  in  whose  presence  an  hour  before  no  man  would 
have  stood  covered.  The  speech  by  which  Pym  bore  the 
House  on  to  Ihis  bold  move,  so  that,  as  Clarendon  says, 
"  not  one  man  was  found  to  stop  the  torrent,"  is  known 
only  from  Clarendon's  outline.  But  that  outline  shows 
how  the  speaker  filled  the  thoughts  of  his  hearers  with 
a  picture  of  the  tyranny,  before  he  named  its  chief  author, 
the  Earl  of  Strafford ;  and  how  he  blended  with  the  ele- 
ments of  indignation  some  lighter  passages  of  the  earl's 
vanity  and  amours,  to  mingle  contempt  with  indignation 
and  to  banish  fear. 

Both  Houses  and  almost  all  their  members  moving  to- 
gether, a  clean  sweep  was  made  of  government  by  pre- 
1641   rogative.     After    Strafford,    Laud    was    impeached    and 
thrown  into  prison  to  await  his  trial.     Cottington,  Finch, 
and  other  ministers  of  arbitrary  government  cowered  or 

1640  fled.     Pr}rnne,  Burton,  and  Bastwick  were  set  free  and 
came  home  in  triumph,  the  people  going  out  to  meet  them 
in  thousands,  strewing  flowers  in  their  way,  and  mingling 
shouts  of  welcome  with  fierce  outcries  against  the  bishops. 
Chambers  was  indemnified  for  his  losses  and  sufferings. 

1641  Ship-money  was  abolished.     Ship-money  judges  were  called 
to  account,  and  the  most  obnoxious  of  them,  Berkeley,  to 
make  an  awful  example,  was  arrested  on  the  bench  of  jus- 
tice.    The  other  fiscal  supplies  of  arbitrary  rule,  as  com- 
positions for  knighthood,  forest  claims  and  fines,  were  cut 
off,  and  an  end  was  put  to  monopolies.     Levying  of  taxes 
without  consent  of  parliament  was    forever  condemned. 


xxi  CHARLES   I  516 

The  courts  of  star  chamber  and  high  commission  were   1641 
abolished,  and  the  action  of  the  privy  council  was  reduced 
within  constitutional  bounds.     The  council  of  the  north,   1641 
the  presidency  of   Wales,  and   other  local  remnants   of 
arbitrary  jurisdiction  were  swept  away.     Here  the  tide  of 
change  reached  high  water  mark.     After  this  the  waves 
rose  much  higher,  but  not  the  tide. 

To  all  this  loss  of  prerogative  Charles  was  fain  to  assent. 
He  was  fain  to  allow  parliament  to  assume  and  exercise 
the  supreme  power  while  it  wielded  the  besom  of  political 
reform.  Still  Charles  was  king.  It  was  in  his  power  at  any 
moment  to  dissolve  parliament,  and  to  reduce  its  members 
to  the  condition  of  private  men  and  subjects  ;  nor  could  it 
meet  again  except  by  the  king's  command.  The  Scotch 
army,  its  present  support  and  really  in  its  pay,  would  then 
be  paid  off  and  gone.  Thus  government  by  prerogative 
might  revive.  Here  lay  the  weakness  of  a  parliament 
aspiring  to  be  the  government.  To  cure  it  an  Act  was  1641 
passed,  and  received  the  enforced  assent  of  the  king, 
providing  that  parliament  should  be  called  at  least  once 
in  every  three  years,  and  that  if  the  king  failed  to  issue 
the  summons,  it  should  be  issued  in  his  name  by  the 
chancellor,  or  in  default  of  the  chancellor  by  any  twelve 
peers;  and  if  no  peers  assembled  for  the  purpose,  the 
local  officers  should  proceed  to  the  election.  This  might 
be  called  a  reversion  to  the  old  Plantagenet  statutes, 
which  prescribed  annual  parliaments,  and  in  that  sense 
might  be  constitutional.  But  a  further  Act  was  passed,  1641 
forbidding  the  dissolution  of  the  parliament  then  sitting 
without  its  own  consent.  This  was  a  measure  of  revolu- 
tionary necessity,  though  veiled  under  the  pretext  that 
parliament  was  borrowing  money  to  pay  off  the  Scotch, 


516  THE   UNITED    KINGDOM  CHAP. 

and  could  not  give  security  to  lenders  unless  its  own 
existence  were  secured.  The  Commons  also  took  the 
finances  into  their  own  hands ;  they  granted  large  sup- 
plies, partly  to  pay  off  the  Scotch,  but  themselves  regu- 
lated the  disbursement.  As  the  revolution  advanced  they 
began  to  legislate  under  the  form  of  Ordinances  without 
the  consent  of  the  crown,  and  to  exercise  the  executive 
power.  They  were,  in  fact,  though  unconsciously,  drawing 
the  sovereignty  to  themselves.  This  is  the  key  to  the 
political  situation  and  at  the  same  time  the  defence  of 
Charles. 

It  was  not  less  fear  of  Strafford  than  resentment  of  his 
crime  against  the  state  that  determined  the  Commons  to 
take  his  life.  His  Irish  army,  believed  to  be  intended  for  the 
subjugation  of  England,  was  his  rankest  offence ;  and  that 
army  still  hung,  or  was  believed  to  hang,  a  thunder-cloud 
on  the  political  horizon.  The  vast  hall  of  Westminster 
1641  was  made  ready  for  the  grandest  political  trial  in  English 
history,  a  trial  to  be  compared  rather  to  that  of  Strafford's 
master  or  to  that  of  Louis  XVI.  than  to  the  ship-money 
trial,  to  that  of  the  bishops  in  the  time  of  James  II.,  or  to 
that  of  Warren  Hastings.  The  Lords  formed  the  court. 
The  hall  was  crowded  with  spectators  whose  excitement 
was  at  first  intense,  though  as  the  trial  dragged  on  listless- 
ness  ensued.  The  king  was  there  behind  a  lattice,  through 
which  he  broke  in  his  eagerness  to  see.  There  he  heard 
these  words  of  Pym,  "  If  the  histories  of  eastern  countries 
be  pursued,  whose  princes  order  their  affairs  according  to 
the  mischievous  principles  of  the  Earl  of  Strafford,  loose 
and  absolved  from  all  rules  of  government,  they  will  be 
found  to  be  frequent  in  combustions,  full  of  massacres  and 
of  the  tragical  end  of  princes."  The  best  speakers  of  the 


xxi  CHAKLES  I  517 

Commons,  Pym  at  their  head,  used  all  their  eloquence. 
Nor  was  the  quarry  unworthy  of  the  hunt.  Stratford 
defended  himself  magnificently,  and  awakened  much  sym- 
pathy, especially  among  the  ladies  of  rank.  It  was  said 
that  like  Ulysses,  though  not  beautiful,  he  had  the  elo- 
quence which  could  inspire  a  goddess  with  love.  He  had 
to  plead  his  own  cause  against  the  powerful  array  of  man- 
agers for  the  Commons.  He  was  allowed  counsel  only  on 
points  of  law,  it  being  held  beneath  the  dignity  of  the 
Commons,  as  of  the  crown,  to  plead  against  advocates,  as 
though  anything  were  more  undignified  than  injustice. 
The  practice  was  a  survival  of  the  time  when  every  man 
pleaded  his  own  cause,  and  the  advocate,  as  the  Latin  word 
and  its  Greek  synonym  import,  came  in  only  as  a  prompter 
or  a  seconder. 

To  bring  Strafford's  case  within  the  treason  law  it  was 
necessary  to  feign  that  he  had  levied  war  against  the  king. 
But  the  king  had  been  his  accomplice.  So  far  as  the  stat- 
ute was  concerned  he  might  well  protest  against  the  un- 
fairness of  the  charge.  The  real  charge  against  him  was 
unknown  to  the  law  or  hitherto  to  the  constitution, 
treason  against  the  nation,  in  "  having  endeavoured  by  his 
words,  actions,  and  counsels  to  subvert  the  fundamental 
laws  of  England  and  Ireland,  and  to  introduce  an  arbitrary 
and  tyrannical  government."  Of  this  he  was  guilty,  and  if 
the  proof  does  not  seem  to  us  complete,  it  seemed  complete 
to  the  men  of  that  time,  who  had  the  facts  before  their 
eyes.  Those  on  whom  he  had  trampled,  or  whose  mal- 
practice he  had  perhaps  curbed  as  lord  deputy  of  Ireland, 
bore  hard  on  him  with  their  testimony.  But  the  most 
fatal  piece  of  evidence  against  him  was  a  paper  of  notes 
taken  down  by  the  elder  Vane,  who  was  secretary  of  state, 


518  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

and  abstracted  by  the  younger  Vane,  of  advice  given  to  the 
king  by  Straff ord  in  council,  and  importing  or  seeming  to 
import  that,  parliament  having  refused  supplies,  the  king 
was  absolved  from  constitutional  rules  of  government,  and 
might  have  recourse  to  any  means  that  he  saw  fit,  includ- 
ing the  employment  of  the  Irish  army,  for  the  subjugation 
of  England. 

Pym  put  forth  all  his  powers  as  an  orator.  And  they 
were  great.  If  his  general  style  was  argumentative,  and 
even  somewhat  heavy  and  homiletic,  he  was  capable  of 
electric  strokes,  and  sometimes  makes  us  think  of  him  as  a 
very  Puritan  Mirabeau.  To  the  charge  of  arbitrary  gov- 
ernment in  Ireland,  Straff  ord  had  pleaded  that  the  Irish 
were  a  conquered  nation.  "They  were  a  conquered  na- 
tion ! "  cries  Pym.  "  There  cannot  be  a  word  more  preg- 
nant or  fruitful  in  treason  than  that  word  is.  There  are 
few  nations  in  the  world  that  have  not  been  conquered, 
and  no  doubt  but  the  conqueror  may  give  what  law  he 
pleases  to  those  that  are  conquered ;  but  if  the  succeeding 
pacts  and  agreements  do  not  limit  and  restrain  that  right, 
what  people  can  be  secure?  England  hath  been  conquered, 
and  Wales  hath  been  conquered ;  and  by  this  reason  will 
be  in  little  better  case  than  Ireland.  If  the  king  by  the 
right  of  a  conqueror  gives  laws  to  his  people,  shall  not  the 
people  by  the  same  reason  be  restored  to  the  right  of  the 
conquered  to  receive  their  liberty  if  they  can?  "  Strafford 
had  alleged  good  intentions  as  an  excuse  for  his  evil  coun- 
sels. "  Sometimes,  my  lords,"  says  Pym,  "  good  and  evil, 
truth  and  falsehood,  lie  so  near  together  that  they  are  hard 
to  be  distinguished.  Matters  hurtful  and  dangerous  may 
be  accompanied  with  such  circumstances  as  may  make 
them  appear  useful  and  convenient.  But  where  the  mat- 


xxi  CHARLES   I  519 

ters  propounded  are  evil  in  their  own  nature,  such  as  the 
matters  are  wherewith  the  Earl  of  Stratford  is  charged,  as 
to  break  public  faith  and  to  subvert  laws  and  government, 
they  can  never  be  justified  by  any  intentions,  how  good 
soever  they  be  pretended."  Again,  to  the  plea  that  it  was 
a  time  of  great  danger  and  necessity,  Pym  replies,  "If 
there  were  any  necessity,  it  was  of  his  own  making ;  he,  by 
his  evil  counsel,  had  brought  the  king  into  a  necessity ;  and 
by  no  rules  of  justice  can  be  allowed  to  gain  this  advantage 
by  his  own  fault,  as  to  make  that  a  ground  of  his  justifica- 
tion, which  is  a  great  part  of  his  offence."  Skilfully  he 
raises  the  minds  of  the  judges  from  the  factitious  and  tech- 
nical to  the  real  indictment.  "  Shall  it  be  treason,"  he  says, 
"  to  embase  the  king's  coin,  though  but  the  piece  of  twelve- 
pence  or  sixpence  ?  And  must  it  not  needs  be  the  effect 
of  a  greater  treason  to  embase  the  spirit  of  his  subjects, 
and  to  set  up  a  stamp  and  character  of  servitude  upon 
them,  whereby  they  shall  be  disabled  to  do  anything  for 
the  service  of  the  king  and  commonwealth?"  To  the 
objection,  which  was  true  enough,  that  the  charge  was 
novel,  his  answer  is,  "  Neither  will  this  be  a  new  way  of 
blood.  There  are  marks  enough  to  trace  this  law  to  the 
very  original  of  this  kingdom ;  and  if  it  hath  not  been  put 
in  execution,  as  he  allegeth,  these  two  hundred  and  forty 
3^ears,  it  was  not  for  want  of  law,  but  that  all  that  time 
hath  not  bred  a  man  bold  enough  to  commit  such  crimes  as 
these."  He  takes  always  the  high  political  ground.  "To 
alter  the  settled  frame  and  constitution  of  government  is 
treason  in  any  state.  The  laws  whereby  all  other  parts  of 
a  kingdom  are  preserved  would  be  very  vain  and  defective 
if  they  had  not  the  power  to  secure  and  preserve  them- 
selves." Stratford  might  have  retorted  that  to  put  the  mon- 


520  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

archy  under  the  feet  of  parliament,  as  Pym  was  doing, 
was  to  alter  the  settled  frame  and  constitution  of  govern- 
ment as  much  as  they  could  have  been  altered  by  putting 
the  parliament  under  the  feet  of  the  king.  Once,  we  are 
told,  while  Pyin  was  speaking,  his  eyes  met  those  of  Straf- 
ford'sf,  and  the  speaker  grew  confused,  lost  the  thread  of 
his  discourse,  and  broke  down  beneath  the  haggard  look  of 
his  old  political  friend. 

Oratory  has  from  that  time  to  this  been  a  mighty 
power  in  politics,  and  its  early  masterpieces  are  momen- 
tous events. 

The  trial  dragged  and  the  Lords  appeared  to  waver. 
The  majority  in  the  Commons  growing  impatient,  over- 
bore their  leaders,  who  wished  to  demand  a  verdict  on 
the  impeachment,  and  determined  to  take  judgment  into 
their  own  hands  by  an  Act  of  Attainder,  thus  once  more 
confounding  the  legislative  and  judicial  powers,  as  they 
had  been  confounded  in  early  times.  The  bill  passed  by 
1641  204  to  59,  Falkland,  and  in  all  probability  Hyde,  with 
many  others  who  afterwards  became  royalists,  voting 
Aye.  The  vote  of  the  Lords  was  still  doubtful.  Straf- 
ford's  fate  was  sealed  by  a  plot,  of  which  the  queen's 
circle  was  the  centre,  for  bringing  up  the  army  which  had 
been  raised  against  the  Scotch  and  lay  not  yet  disbanded 
in  the  north,  to  overawe  the  parliament;  a  scheme  like 
that  by  which  Marie  Antoinette  and  her  evil  counsellors 
precipitated  the  crash  in  France.  The  plot  was  betrayed. 
It  furnished  Pym  with  a  subject  for  an  appeal  to  the 
country,  in  the  shape  of  a  protestation  of  fidelity  to  par- 
liamentary privilege  and  public  right,  and  against  the  de- 
signs of  papists,  which  was  signed  by  all  the  Commons. 
Mobs  threatening  violence,  the  evil  concomitant  of  revo- 


xxi  CHARLES  I  521 

lution,  beset  the  Houses.  The  Bill  of  Attainder  passed 
the  intimidated  Lords.  Fear  of  the  mighty  enemy  of 
parliament  sealed  his  doom.  When  imprisonment  for 
life  was  proposed,  the  answer  was,  "  Stone-dead  hath  no 
fellow."  At  the  last  moment  an  attempt  was  made  to 
deal  with  the  situation  in  what  is  now  the  established 
way,  by  bringing  the  leaders  of  the  opposition  into  office ; 
but  this  was  frustrated  by  the  sudden  death  of  the  Earl  1641 
of  Bedford,  a  patriotic  but  moderate  man,  whose  great 
personal  influence  might  possibly  have  stilled  the  waves. 
Once  more  we  have  to  acknowledge  the  force  of  accident 
in  history. 

Charles  had  assured  Strafford,  on  the  word  of  a  king, 
that  he  should  not  suffer  in  life,  honour,  or  fortune.  Could 
he  now  assent  to  the  Bill  which  was  the  earl's  death-war- 
rant? Honour  by  the  lips  of  Juxon  said  that  he  could 
not,  and  honour  was  the  true  policy.  But  the  casuistry 
of  Williams,  with  fear  for  wife  and  children,  turned  the 
scale.  Strafford  magnanimously  gave  the  king  back  his 
pledge.  Charles  miserably  haggled,  and  at  last,  induced  by 
a  misapplied  distinction  between  his  private  and  his  public 
conscience,  gave  his  assent.  Bitterly  he  afterwards  re-  1641 
pented  the  act,  and  with  good  reason,  for  by  it  he  was 
more  than  discrowned.  In  signing  Strafford's  death-war- 
rant, in  truth,  he  signed  his  own  doom.  Abdication  would 
have  been  better;  but  had  the  king  shown  courage  it  is 
not  likely  that  violence  would  have  been  used.  Strafford 
died  with  a  dignity  which  embalmed  his  memory,  and  they 
who,  rejecting  any  plea  for  a  milder  course,  said  that  stone- 
dead  had  no  fellow,  failed  to  see  that  the  memory  and  the 
influence  live. 

Had  Charles  been  a  strong  man  he  might  have  frankly 


522  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

thrown  himself  into  the  arms  of  parliament,  with  good  hope 
of  one  day  recovering  part  of  his  power.  But  if  he  had  been 
a  strong  man  he  would  never  have  been  where  he  was. 
More  than  once  in  the  course  of  the  contest  he  or  some 
one  at  his  side  seems  to  have  thought  of  calling  the  lead- 
ers of  the  opposition  into  office  and  to  have  made  overtures 
of  that  sort.  He  created  patriots  titular  privy  council- 
lors. He  offered  Pym  the  chancellorship  of  the  exchequer. 
But  mutual  confidence  was  fatally  wanting.  Feebly  and 
irresolutely  Charles  manoeuvred  against  a  great  tactician 
thoroughly  informed  of  all  his  moves.  Allowance,  how- 
ever, must  be  made  not  only  for  his  natural  desire  to 
remain  a  real  king,  but  for  liis  natural  belief  that  a  real 
king  was  indispensable  to  the  nation.  In  the  manifestoes 
of  all  the  patriot  parliaments,  in  the  speeches  of  all  the  pa- 
triot leaders,  he  might  have  found  warrants  for  that  belief. 
In  political  reform  the  patriots  went  together,  dividing 
only  on  the  Bill  of  Attainder,  and  in  that  case  not  on  party 
lines.  For  ecclesiastical  reform  they  went  together  up  to 
a  certain  mark,  which  was,  in  effect,  that  of  a  thoroughly 
protestant  church  of  England.  They  all  concurred  in 
Ki4l  throwing  Laud  into  prison,  abolishing  his  court  of  high 
commission,  clipping  his  ecclesiastical  jurisdiction,  sweep- 
ing away  his  ceremonial,  and  presently  in  carrying  back 
the  communion  table  to  the  middle  of  the  church,  order- 
ing the  removal  of  images,  crosses,  candlesticks,  and  paint- 
ings, condemning  the  Book  of  Sports,  and  restoring  the 
Puritan  Sabbath,  against  which  the  Book  of  Sports  was 
directed.  They  all  concurred  in  quashing  the  canons 
which  convocation  made  after  the  rising  of  parliament, 
and  practically  suppressing  convocation  as  an  independent 
legislature.  They  were  all  alike  willing  to  reduce  the 


xxi  CHARLES   I  523 

power  of  the  bishops,  and  most  of  them  were  willing  to 
disable  churchmen  from  holding  secular  office  and  to  take 
the  bishops  out  of  the  House  of  Lords.  Unhappily,  they 
were  also  unanimous  in  demanding  the  execution  of  the 
penal  laws  against  the  popish  priests,  one  of  whom  was  put 
to  death,  while  another  was  with  difficulty  saved  by  the 
king.  But  when  it  came  to  the  abolition  of  episcopacy 
and  of  the  Prayer  Book,  which  the  Root-and-Branch  party, 
as  it  was  called,  demanded,  the  more  conservative  hung 
back,  a  rift  opened,  discord  broke  out,  and  a  royalist  party 
began  to  form  itself  on  a  religious  line.  There  were  re- 
formers in  the  state  who  were  not  levellers,  and  who  fore- 
saw that,  state  and  church  being  bound  up  together,  a 
"  parity  "  in  one  would  be  apt  to  bring  with  it  a  "  parity  "  in 
the  other.  Liberals,  such  as  Falkland,  might  shrink  from 
the  domination  of  a  popular  ministry  as  much  as  from  the 
domination  of  the  bishops.  Conservatism  was  naturally 
prevalent  in  the  Lords,  who  showed  themselves  unwilling 
to  consent  to  the  removal  of  the  bishops  from  their  House. 
The  reaction  was  all  the  stronger  because,  the  depths  of 
opinion  being  stirred  by  revolutionary  agitation,  fanatical 
sectarianism  had  raised  its  head  and  mechanics  were  dar- 
ing to  preach.  On  the  Root-and-Branch  Bill,  for  the 
total  abolition  of  episcopacy,  the  open  rupture  took  place. 
Throughout  this  history  and  down  to  our  own  time  we 
have  occasion  to  mark  the  evils  and  the  confusion  which 
arise  from  a  connection  of  the  church  with  the  state  and 
the  entanglement  of  political  progress  with  ecclesiastical 
and  theological  disputes.  The  fallacy  was  natural,  per- 
haps inevitable,  but  it  was  profound  and  its  effects  were 
deadly.  At  the  root  of  all  was  the  belief  in  dogma  as 
necessary  to  salvation. 


524  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP 

Charles  had  succumbed,  but  he  had  not  acquiesced.  He 
and  his  queen  continue  to  negotiate  for  support  in  differ- 
ent, indeed  in  opposite,  quarters ;  among  the  catholic  lords 
of  Ireland,  at  Rome,  at  Madrid,  and  in  Holland,  whose 
1641  Stadtholder's  heir  now  marries  their  daughter  Mary.  The 
1641  king  declares  his  intention  of  going  to  Scotland,  osten- 
sibly for  the  purpose  of  settling  it  and  of  disbanding  the 
English  army  by  the  way,  really  to  make  himself  a  party 
among  the  Scotch  nobles,  ever  ready  for  cabal,  and  perhaps 
at  the  same  time  to  collect  proofs  of  the  treasonable  corre- 
spondence of  the  English  leaders  with  the  Scotch.  Failing 
to  prevent  his  going,  the  leaders  send  a  committee  with 
Hampden  at  its  head  to  watch  him,  and  the  precaution  was 
soon  justified  by  the  bursting  of  a  plot  at  Edinburgh  against 
Argyle  and  the  Covenanting  leaders  quaintly  designated 
the  Incident,  in  which  figured  the  restless  spirit  of  the 
young  Montrose. 

1641  Then  came  like  a  thunder-clap  the  news  of  a  great  rebel- 
lion of  the  catholics  and  a  massacre  of  the  protestants  in 
Ireland.  The  causes  of  the  rebellion  were  race,  religion, 
and  confiscation  of  land,  especially  the  last,  together  with 
the  fear  of  a  Puritan  parliament  and  the  contagion  of  politi- 
cal excitement.  By  the  persecution  of  the  native  religion, 
the  catholic  nobles  and  clergy  were  driven  to  cast  in  their 
lot  with  the  rebel  peasantry,  who  might  otherwise  have 
been  without  leaders.  That  there  was  a  terrible  massacre 
of  protestants  cannot  be  doubted.  Nor  can  we  at  once 
reject  stories  of  special  atrocity,  however  fiendish.  Every- 
one knows  of  what  Celtic  frenzy  in  Ireland  or  in  Paris  is 
capable.  It  seems  that  besides  those  who  were  slain  out- 
right multitudes  were  driven  from  their  homes  to  die  of 
cold  and  want.  That  the  excited  imagination  of  the  sur- 


xxi  CHARLES  I  526 

vivors  saw  ghosts  is  no  proof  of  the  unreality  of  the  mas- 
sacre. There  must  have  been  something  to  excite  their 
imagination  The  shock  in  England  was  as  that  of  a 
Cawnpore  on  a  large  scale  and  close  at  home.  Charles  was 
said  to  have  used  words  importing  that  he  regarded  the 
catastrophe  as  rather  an  opportune  diversion.  To  know 
whether  he  was  himself  entirely  free  from  blame  for  the 
outbreak  we  must  be  better  informed  as  to  his  dealings 
with  the  catholic  nobles  of  Ireland. 

Pym  and  the  leaders,  apprised  of  the  machinations  in 
Scotland,  appalled  by  the  news  from  Ireland,  and  probably 
not  unaware  of  the  incessant  intrigues  of  the  queen,  felt 
that  they  were  now  standing  on  a  mine.  About  this  time 
an  attempt  was  made  to  assassinate  Pym.  A  letter  was 
handed  to  him  in  the  House  from  which,  when  it  was 
opened,  dropped  a  rag  taken  from  a  plague-sore,  and  in- 
tended to  give  him  the  plague.  Violence  was  in  the  air. 
Pym  resolved  on  the  momentous  step  of  an  appeal  against 
the  crown  to  the  people.  It  took  the  form  of  the  Grand 
Remonstrance,  a  manifesto  rehearsing  in  two  hundred  1641 
and  six  clauses  all  the  abuses,  misdeeds,  and  usurpations 
of  Charles's  government,  civil  and  ecclesiastical,  since 
the  beginning  of  the  reign,  magnifying  the  services  and 
achievements  of  parliament  in  obtaining  redress  and  re- 
form, and  ending  with  a  demand  for  more  complete  safe- 
guards, notably  for  the  right  of  excluding  from  the  king's 
council  all  who  had  not  the  confidence  of  the  Commons ;  a 
right  which  if  conceded  would  have  in  effect  given  parlia- 
ment the  control  of  the  executive  government.  There  was,  ' 
of  course,  the  ever-recurring  and  ever-hateful  demand  for 
the  execution  of  the  penal  laws  against  the  catholics.  To 
reassure  the  timid  on  the  religious  question  and  prevent  a 


526  THE    UNITED    KINGDOM  CHAP. 

split,  the  reformers  declared  that  it  was  far  from  their  pur- 
pose or  desire  to  let  loose  the  golden  reins  of  discipline  and 
government  in  the  church,  leaving  particular  congregations 
or  private  persons  to  take  up  what  form  of  worship  they 
pleased,  inasmuch  as  they  held  it  requisite  that  there 
should  be  throughout  the  whole  realm  a  conformity  to  that 
order  which  the  laws  enjoined  according  to  the  Word  of 
God.  For  church  reformation  a  general  synod  which 
would  not  be,  like  convocation,  under  the  control  of  the 
crown  and  the  bishops,  was  to  be  convened.  In  the  list  of 
royal  misdeeds  the  slow  murder  of  Sir  John  Eliot  was  not 
forgotten ;  Pym  and  Hampden  no  doubt  remembered  it 
well,  and  took  it  as  a  warning  against  trusting  themselves 
to  the  hands  of  Charles.  The  final  debate  on  the  Grand 
Remonstrance  was  a  pitched  battle  between  the  two  parties 
of  revolution  and  reaction,  now  distinctly  separated  from 
each  other.  It  was  one  of  the  great  oratorical  contests  of 
history.  A  debate  was  not  then  a  series  of  speeches 
addressed  to  the  public  outside  with  little  thought  of 
influencing  the  vote ;  it  was  a  struggle  for  victory  in  an 
assembly  still  deliberative.  The  speakers  here  were  of  the 
highest  order,  the  fight  was  for  the  life  of  the  revolution, 
and  the  excitement  was  intense.  Unhappily,  only  the  barest 
outline  of  the  speeches  remains  to  us.  After  being  fiercely 
debated  from  early  morning  till  midnight,  the  Remon- 
1641  strance  was  carried  by  159  to  148.  So  electric  was  the 
atmosphere  that  the  attempt  of  one  of  the  minority  to  enter 
a  protest  brought  on  a  storm  in  which  members  not  only 
shouted  and  waved  their  hats  wildly,  but  handled  their 
swords,  and  but  for  Hampden's  presence  of  mind  might  have 
sheathed  them  in  each  other's  bowels.  Cromwell  said  that 
if  the  motion  had  been  lost  he  would  have  gone  to  New 


xxi  CHARLES  I  627 

England.  We  may  be  sure  that  he  would  not  have  fled 
from  a  shadow.  In  the  impossibility,  as  the  leaders  deemed 
it,  of  relying  on  the  good  faith  of  the  king,  and  the  conse- 
quent insecurity  of  all  that  had  been  won,  must  be  sought 
the  justification  of  a  step  beyond  doubt  revolutionary 
and  tending  to  civil  war.  The  royalist  historian  ad- 
mits that  Charles  had  made  concessions  lightly  because 
he  was  advised  that  having  been  made  under  compul- 
sion they  might  afterwards  lawfully  be  withdrawn.  That 
the  court  was  all  along  meditating  a  forcible  resump- 
tion of  its  power  seems  to  have  been  sufficiently  proved. 
In  the  queen's  circle  plottings  for  bringing  up  the  army 
to  coerce  parliament  were  always  going  on,  negotiations 
for  foreign  aid  in  different  quarters  were  always  on 
foot,  and  applications  were  always  being  made  for  as- 
sistance to  the  pope,  whose  terms  were  the  king's  con- 
version. 

Charles  returned  from  Scotland  in  a  hopeful  mood.  He  1641 
had  made  his  peace  with  the  Covenanting  Earl  of  Argyle, 
now  master  of  that  country.  At  the  same  time  he  had 
seen  the  germ  formed  of  a  royalist  party,  foremost  in 
which,  though  lately  so  zealous  for  the  Covenant,  was 
Montrose.  He  probably  believed  himself  to  have  found 
proofs  of  the  correspondence  of  the  English  leaders  with 
the  Scotch.  In  his  absence  events  had  been  working  in 
his  favour.  The  seething  of  the  revolutionary  cauldron 
and  the  appearance  of  anarchic  forces  on  the  scene  had 
awakened  a  reaction  among  the  wealthier  classes.  The 
people  were  probably  galled  by  the  taxation  which  the 
parliament  had  been  compelled  to  impose  in  order  to  pro- 
vide the  Brotherly  Aid  demanded  by  the  Scotch.  The 
fascinating  queen  had  skilfully  plied  her  arts.  Charles 


528  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

1641  was  welcomed  to  London,  and  was  splendidly  feasted  at 
Guildhall  by  a  royalist  who  had  been  elected  Lord 
Mayor.  He  felt  confident,  and  received  the  Remonstrance 
with  a  light  heart.  Meantime  the  plot  was  thickening. 
Disbanded  soldiers  and  other  violent  partisans  of  the  court 
were  gathered  round  the  palace  at  Westminster.  There 
were  affrays  between  them  and  the  city  apprentices.  The 
nicknames  of  Roundhead  and  Cavalier  were  heard.  Mobs 
surrounded  the  Houses.  The  bishops,  being  hustled  and 
insulted  when  they  went  to  the  House  of  Lords,  withdrew, 

!641  and  in  an  unhappy  moment  protested  that  in  their  absence 
the  proceedings  of  parliament  were  void,  for  which  ten  of 
them  were,  with  the  revolutionary  violence  which  now 
reigned,  impeached  and  imprisoned.  The  appointment  by 

1641  the  king  of  Lunsford,  a  desperate  character,  to  the  govern- 
orship of  the  Tower  naturally  filled  the  Commons  with 
alarm.      Charles,  in  his  wiser  mood,  had  called  into  his 
councils   Falkland,   Hyde,  and   Culpepper,  constitutional 
royalists  who,  if  he  had  listened  to  their  advice,  might 
have  guided  him  aright.     But  less  wise  counsellors,  the 
brilliant  and  restless  Digby,  a  convert  to  royalism,  and  the 
queen,  turned  his  wavering  mind  to  a  less  prudent  course. 

1642  jje  ordered  his  attorney-general  to  proceed  against  five 
members  of  the  House  of  Commons,  including  Pym  and 
Hampden,  and  one  member  of  the  House  of  Lords,  Kim- 
bolton,  afterwards  Earl  of  Manchester,  for  high  treason. 
The  House  of  Commons  refused  to  give  up  the  five  mem- 
bers.    Charles,  goaded  on  by  his  wife,  who  called  him  a 
poltroon,  and  bade  him  pull  out  the  rogues  by  the  ears  or 
never  see  her  again,  went  in  person  with  an  armed  train  to 
arrest  the  members  in  the  House.      But  the  queen  had 
betrayed  the  plot  to  a  faithless  confidante.     The  birds  had 


xxi  CHARLES   I  629 

flown.  Speaker  Lenthall,  questioned  by  the  king,  could 
neither  see  nor  hear  but  as  he  was  commanded  by  the 
House.  If  Charles  had  ever  meditated  further  violence, 
which  probably  he  had  not,  his  resolution  failed  him,  and 
he  departed  with  his  train.  But  all  hope  of  peace  was 
gone.  The  House  took  refuge  in  the  sympathizing  city, 
whence  it  returned  in  triumph ;  while  a  great  body  of  free- 
holders rode  up  from  Buckinghamshire  to  tender  their 
support  to  Hampden.  The  king  left  Whitehall,  whither  he 
was  to  return  only  to  die.  Hollow  negotiations  went  on, 
each  party  manoeuvring  for  the  weather-gage  of  public 
opinion.  To  the  exclusion  of  the  bishops  from  the  House  1542 
of  Lords  the  king  assented,  probably  at  the  instance  of  the 
queen,  who,  as  a  catholic,  cared  little  for  heretic  bishops, 
and  little  for  the  heretic  church  altogether,  so  long  as  her 
husband  kept  the  sword.  The  ultimatum  of  the  Commons 
was  the  control  of  the  king's  council,  in  effect  of  the  exec- 
utive government,  with  the  command  of  the  military  force  ;  1642 
concessions  which  would  practically  have  reduced  the  mon- 
archy to  a  constitutional  figurehead.  Charles's  answer 
was  decisive.  To  the  suggestion  that  he  might  resign  the 
command  of  the  military  force  for  a  time  he  replied,  "  By 
God !  not  for  an  hour ;  you  have  asked  that  of  me  in  this, 
was  never  asked  of  a  king,  and  with  which  I  will  not  trust 
my  wife  and  children."  Then  came  civil  war. 

The  voice  of  the  cannon  was  preceded  by  volleys  of  paper 
missiles  from  both  sides.  A  stately  war  of  manifestoes 
was  waged  between  Pym  for  the  Commons  and  Clarendon 
for  the  king.  Clarendon  had  the  best  of  it,  since  it  was 
impossible  to  prove  that  revolution  was  constitutional. 
Yet  Pym  was  wise  in  doing  his  best  to  persuade  a  law- 
loving  people  that  the  revolution  had  law  on  its  side. 
VOL.  i  —  34 


530  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

It  was  on  a  political  issue  that  the  parliament  finally 
broke  with  the  king.  But  the  religious  question  between 
Anglican  and  Puritan  was  the  deepest  after  all.  Loyalty 
to  the  person  of  the  king,  however,  had  become  a  tenet  of 
the  Anglican  church,  and  apart  from  religion  was  strong 
among  the  upper  gentry.  As  a  distinct  principle  of  action 
it  is  perhaps  now  avowed  for  the  first  time.  "  I  have 
eaten  the  king's  bread,  and  served  him  near  thirty  years, 
and  I  will  not  do  so  base  a  thing  as  to  forsake  him,  and 
choose  rather  to  lose  my  life  (which  I  am  sure  I  shall  do), 
to  preserve  and  defend  those  things  which  are  against  my 
conscience  to  preserve  and  defend:  for  I  will  deal  freely 
with  you,  I  have  no  reverence  for  the  bishops  for  whom 
this  quarrel  subsists."  So  spoke  Sir  Edmund  Verney,  the 
king's  standard-bearer,  and  there  were  many  who  though 
they  had  not  eaten  the  king's  bread,  thought  themselves 
like  him  bound,  in  whatever  cause,  to  fight  for  the  king. 
Sir  Ralph  Hopton,  Sir  Bevil  Grenville,  and  Sir  Jacob 
Astley  were  noble  specimens  of  a  worship  of  royalty  which, 
if  the  idol  in  its  shrine  is  sometimes  an  ape,  is  still  devotion 
and  not  interest,  at  least  not  the  interest  of  the  individual 
man,  but  the  sublimated  interest  of  his  class. 

All  wars  are  evils,  and  a  civil  war  is  far  the  greatest. 
But  civil  war,  like  international  war,  will  remain  a  possi- 
bility till  political  science,  or  something  clear  of  passion 
and  self-interest,  reigns.  If  socialism  insists  on  confis- 
cating property,  and  property  is  resolved  to  resist  confis- 
cation, there  will  be  civil  war  ;  and  it  may  be  open  to 
doubt  whether  the  arbitrament  of  force  is  morally  much 
worse  than  the  arbitrament  of  factious  strife,  with  the 
malignity,  the  trickery,  the  lying,  and  the  corruption  which 
it  involves.  That  there  must  be  a  national  religion,  and 


xxi  CHARLES  I  531 

all  must  be  required  to  conform,  was  the  belief  of  both 
the  great  parties  at  this  time,  the  light  of  religious  liberty 
having  as  yet  dawned  but  on  few  minds.  To  decide 
whether  the  religion  should  be  protestant  or  anti-protestant, 
and  at  the  same  time  whether  the  king  or  the  parliament 
should  be  supreme,  was  in  that  age  hardly  possible  save  by 
the  sword. 

Sir  William  Waller  writes  to  his  friend  and  antagonist, 
the  royalist  general,  Sir  Ralph  Hopton,  "  My  affections  to 
you  are  so  unchangeable,  that  hostility  itself  cannot  violate 
my  friendship  to  your  person.  But  I  must  be  true  to  the 
cause  wherein  I  serve.  .  .  .  That  great  God  who  is  the 
searcher  of  my  heart  knows  with  what  a  sad  sense  I  go  upon 
this  service,  and  with  what  a  perfect  hatred  I  detest  this 
war  without  an  enemy.  .  .  .  The  God  of  Heaven  in  His 
good  time  send  us  the  blessing  of  peace,  and  in  the  mean- 
time fit  us  to  receive  it !  We  are  both  upon  the  stage,  and 
must  act  such  parts  as  are  assigned  us  in  this  tragedy. 
Let  us  do  it  in  a  way  of  honour  and  without  personal  ani- 
mosities." It  was  not  only  friend  against  friend  and 
neighbour  against  neighbour,  but  father  against  son,  son 
against  father,  brother  against  brother,  while  women's 
hearts  were  to  be  torn  between  the  husband  who  fought 
on  one  side,  the  father  and  brother  who  fought  on  the 
other.  Those  who  last  Christmas  had  met  round  the 
same  festive  board  were  before  next  Christmas  to  meet  in 
battle. 

Yet  this  civil  war  of  Englishmen  was,  on  the  whole, 
carried  on  as  Sir  William  Waller  had  prayed ;  and, 
if  by  no  means  without  personal  animosity,  or  without 
cruelty,  at  least  without  the  savage  cruelty  which  has 
marked  the  civil  wars  of  some  nations.  It  was  waged,  on 


532  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

the  whole,  as  a  war  of  principle,  the  war  of  a  self-controlled 
and  manly  race.  Atrocities  there  were  on  both  sides,  most 
on  that  of  the  Cavaliers,  whose  leader,  Rupert,  had  been 
trained  in  savage  German  war.  Towns  were  sacked ; 
1646  Leicester,  for  instance,  was  cruelly  sacked  by  the  royalists. 
There  was  plundering,  chiefly  on  the  side  of  the  Cava- 
liers, while  the  Roundhead  armies  subsisted  more  on  regu- 
lar exactions.  There  were  cases  of  garrisons  slaughtered 
when  resistance  had  ceased.  But  England  was  not  wasted 
as  Germany  was  wasted  by  the  armies  of  Mansfeld  and 
Wallenstein.  The  laws  of  war  were  generally  observed, 
and  quarter  was  usually  given.  Only  with  the  hapless 
Irish,  alien  in  race  and  in  religion,  who  had  set  the  ex- 
ample of  massacre,  war  was  internecine.  To  them  no 
quarter  was  given ;  even  their  female  camp-followers  were 
put  to  the  sword.  The  women  of  Lyme,  finding  an 
Irishwoman  left  in  the  abandoned  camp  of  the  besiegers, 
set  upon  her  and  tore  her  to  pieces.  There  appears  to 
have  been  comparatively  little  interruption  in  the  general 
course  of  life  and  of  law.  The  war  was  entered  upon, 
too,  by  the  Commons  at  least,  in  the  right  spirit  as  a  most 
mournful  necessity,  with  public  humiliation  and  prayer. 
The  playhouses  were  closed  by  the  ordinance  of  parlia- 
ment, as  in  a  time  of  national  sorrow.  These  hypocrites, 
say  royalists,  knelt  down  to  pray,  and  rose  up  again  to 
shed  innocent  blood.  Does  not  every  religious  soldier, 
when  he  goes  into  battle,  do  the  same? 

Those  who  give  the  signal  for  civil  war  are  bound  to 
have  its  object  and  the  conditions  of  peace  clearly  in 
view.  To  put  out  with  the  ship  of  state  on  a  raging  sea 
without  knowing  for  what  port  you  are  making  would  be 
the  height  of  folly  and  of  crime.  What  did  Pym  and 


xxi  *      CHARLES   I  533 

Hampden  mean  to  do  with  the  church  and  commonwealth 
when  they  had  beaten  the  king?  The  church,  of  course, 
they  meant  to  make  Puritan,  probably  with  an  episcopate 
unmitred  and  reduced  in  power ;  for  neither  of  them  was 
in  principle  opposed,  as  were  the  Presbyterians  and  Inde- 
pendents, to  that  form  of  church  government.  As  to 
the  commonwealth,  both  of  them  were  monarchists,  though 
they  wished  to  put  the  monarch  under  parliamentary  con- 
trol. Yet  they  could  never  have  set  Charles  again  upon 
his  throne.  That  no  faith  could  be  placed  in  his  pledges 
and  concessions,  however  solemn,  was  their  motive  and 
justification  for  drawing  the  sword.  Probably  they  would 
have  done  what  was  done  by  their  political  heirs  in  1688 ; 
they  would  have  kept  the  monarchy,  but  changed  the 
dynasty.  Lewis,  the  young  Elector  Palatine,  son  of  that 
protestant  idol,  the  Electress  Elizabeth,  had  appeared  in 
England,  and  the  eyes  of  the  people  had  been  turned  to 
him.  It  seems  not  unlikely  that,  had  the  party  of  Pym 
and  Hampden  prevailed,  he  might  have  been  called  to  the 
constitutional  throne  to  which  the  patriots  of  1688  called 
William  of  Orange. 

Parliament  levied  war  against  the  king  in  the  king's 
name,  pretending  that  it  sought  to  secure  him  from  the 
hands  of  bad  advisers,  Malignants,  as  they  began  to  be 
called,  and  that  its  commands  to  fight  against  him  were 
his  commands  transmitted  through  the  two  Houses  as  his 
constitutional  mouthpieces.  But  this  fiction  did  not  pre- 
vent it  from  organizing  itself  as  a  revolutionary  govern- 
ment, with  an  executive  committee  of  which  Pym  was  the 
chief;  from  raising  an  army;  from  supplying  itself  with 
money  by  the  exercise  of  the  taxing  power ;  or,  when  the 
keeper  of  the  great  seal  had  carried  it  away  to  the  king,  1644 


534  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

1643  from  making  for  itself  a  new  great  seal.     It  passed  Acts, 
calling  them  Ordinances.     The  king  in  time  called  a  par- 

1644  liament  of  his  own  at  Oxford,  widening  the  gulf  between 
him  and  Westminster.   At  Westminster  the  Commons  were 
practically  the  parliament.     The  Lords  had  for  some  time 
been  feeling  the  influences  of  their  rank  and  wealth,  and 
falling  behind  the  Commons  in  revolutionary  zeal.     They 
had  needed  to  be  told  that  if  they  would  not  do  their 
part  in  saving  the  nation,  the  Commons  must  save  it  by 
themselves.     Secession  soon  reduced  them  to  a  handful, 
and  they  sank  by  degrees  into  an  appendage  of  the  Com- 
mons, preserved  for  the  sake  of  the  constitutional  forms 
to  which  with  English  tenacity  the  revolutionists  clung. 
London  being  the  mainstay  and  the  treasury  of  the  cause, 
its  council  had  a  share  of  power,  and  by  Cavalier  scof- 
fers the  revolutionary  government  was  called  the  Common 
Council,  the  Commons  Council,  and  the  Three  Lords. 

Ecclesiastical  as  well  as  political  supremacy  was  grasped 
by  the  revolutionary  assembly.  Episcopacy  was  swept 
aside,  and  the  bishops'  lands,  with  those  of  the  cathedral 
chapters,  were  presently  thrown  into  the  revolutionary 
1643  treasury.  To  an  assembly  of  one  hundred  and  twenty- 
one  divines,  sitting  at  Westminster,  parliament  entrusted 
the  arduous  task  of  framing  a  national  church,  with  its 
creed  and  form  of  worship,  after  the  Puritan  model.  Of 
the  divines,  almost  all,  including  the  prolocutor,  Dr. 
Twisse,  were  Presbyterians  bent  upon  imposing  on  the 
nation  that  rule  which  they  deemed  of  divine  institution ; 
but  which,  while  it  would  have  saved  from  priestcraft 
and  thaumaturgy,  would  have  laid  on  free  thought  and 
spiritual  liberty  a  yoke  hardly  less  heavy  than  was  that 
of  Laud  and  would  have  cast  a  still  darker  shadow  than 


xxi  CHARLES   I  535 

was  cast  by  Laud's  despotism  over  social  life.  A  few  of 
the  members,  headed  by  Goodwin  and  Nye,  and  classed  as 
Independents,  were  for  the  Congregational  system  and  gen- 
erally inclined  towards  that  which  these  men  called  Chris- 
tian liberty,  and  the  Presbyterian  abhorred  as  toleration. 
A  few  Episcopalians  had  at  first  been  nominated  for 
appearance'  sake,  but  they  at  once  dropped  out.  The 
Erastian  principle  of  state  control  over  the  church  was 
effectively  represented  by  the  learned  Selden,  with  some 
other  lawyers,  to  the  great  annoyance  of  the  theocratic 
Presbyterians.  All,  Presbyterians  and  Congregationalists 
alike,  were  still  for  a  national  church,  which  they  deemed 
the  ordinance  of  God,  though  how  to  frame  a  national 
church  on  the  Congregational  plan  was  a  problem  which 
the  Congregationalists  found  difficult  to  solve. 

The  economical  and  political  map  of  England  was 
widely  different  then  from  what  it  is  now.  The  north 
and  north  midland  were  backward,  aristocratic,  and  still 
half  feudal.  Only  in  a  few  little  clothing-towns,  such 
as  Manchester,  Leeds,  Bradford,  or  in  Birmingham  already 
noted  for  its  iron  work,  had  the  germs  of  the  manufactur- 
ing industry,  and  with  them  of  radicalism,  begun  to  ap- 
pear. Wales  and  the  west  of  England  were,  like  the 
north  of  England,  economically  backward  and  controlled 
by  local  magnates.  Wales  still  retained,  with  the  Celtic 
speech,  something  of  her  old  nationality  and  her  antago- 
nism to  England.  The  regions  of  commerce,  manufact- 
ures and  the  political  sentiments  connected  with  them, 
were  in  the  south  and  east,  and  here  the  parliament  had 
power.  London  was  the  core  and  the  mainstay  of  the 
Puritan  cause,  as  well  as  the  seat  of  the  revolutionary 
government.  It  was  Presbyterian,  and  a  limit  was  put 


536  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

to  its  revolutionary  tendencies  by  its  wealth.  In  the 
south  and  east,  especially  in  the  east,  were  the  homes  of 
a  stout  yeomanry,  Independents  in  religion,  and  destined 
to  supply  the  military  sinews  of  the  cause.  A  line  drawn 
from  Hull  to  Southampton  would  roughly  divide  the  coun- 
try of  the  parliament  from  that  of  the  king.  But  Bristol, 
Gloucester,  and  Plymouth,  though  west  of  that  line,  were, 
as  trading  cities,  for  the  Commons.  Parties,  however,  were 
everywhere  more  or  less  mingled.  London  was  the  mili- 
tary as  well  as  the  political  centre  of  the  parliament.  That 
of  the  king  was  Oxford,  the  advanced  post  of  his  loyal 
west  and  the  base  of  his  operations  against  London. 

Of  the  social  classes,  the  nobles  were  now  for  the  most 
part  on  the  side  of  the  king,  though  a  few  still  adhered  to 
the  Commons.  The  wealthy  gentry  also,  though  with  not 
a  few  exceptions,  were  on  the  king's  side.  So  were  the 
Anglican  clergy,  especially  those  of  the  cathedral  cities. 
So  were  the  universities,  Oxford  more  intensely  than  Cam- 
bridge, which  was  in  some  degree  under  the  influence  of 
the  Puritan  eastern  counties.  Though  the  division  of 
parties  did  not  strictly  coincide  with  that  of  classes,  the 
Cavaliers'  was  decidedly  the  patrician,  the  Roundheads' 
the  plebeian  cause.  The  royalist  historian  could  complain 
after  a  battle  that  the  losses  were  very  unequal,  because 
while  on  the  side  of  the  parliament  some  obscure  officer 
was  missing,  or  some  citizen's  wife  bewailed  the  loss  of 
her  husband,  on  the  king's  side  twenty  persons  of  honour 
and  quality  had  been  slain.  This  became  more  marked  as 
the  war  went  on  and  the  thoroughly  plebeian  Independents 
pushed  themselves  to  the  front  on  the  parliamentary  side. 

The  catholics,  who  largely  belonged  to  old  families  in 
the  north,  were  on  the  side  of  the  king,  not  because  they 


xxi  CHARLES   I  537 

loved  him,  but  because  they  feared  and  hated  his  Puritan 
enemies,  who  were  always  thirsting  for  their  blood.  Their 
hearts  also  turned  to  his  catholic  queen.  Connection  with 
them  did  the  king  as  much  harm  as  their  sympathy  and 
aid  did  him  good.  Nor  did  he  shrink  from  throwing  them 
over  when  he  thought  it  would  serve  his  turn.  Some  aid 
he  got  from  the  catholics  of  Ireland,  with  whom  he  car- 
ried on  irresolute  intrigues.  But  he  paid  dearly  for  that 
aid  in  the  fury  of  popular  wrath  which  was  aroused  by 
any  connection  witlh.  rebel  Irish  and  papists  steeped  in 
protestant  blood. 

Of  assistance  from  abroad  the  king  got  little,  though 
he  tried  in  all  quarters,  in  France,  in  Spain,  in  Holland, 
in  Denmark,  and  was  ready  even  to  bring  on  England 
the  mercenary  bands  of  the  Duke  of  Lorraine.  A  har- 
vest of  national  odium  was  what  he  chiefly  reaped  by 
these  attempts.  The  aim  of  Mazarin,  the  crafty  Italian 
who  now  ruled  the  councils  of  France,  was  to  weaken 
England  by  division.  Catholic  monarchs  at  last  looked 
on  with  folded  hands  at  the  catastrophe  of  a  heretic 
throne.  By  the  house  of  Orange,  allied  by  marriage,  sym- 
pathy was  shown  and  aid  was  lent,  thanks  largely  to 
the  exertions  of  Henrietta,  a  brave  and  energetic  woman, 
who,  while  she  brought  folly  and  violence  to  the  king's 
councils,  infused  spirit  into  his  war. 

Heavy  cavalry  was  once  more  the  principal  arm,  and 
this  at  first  gave  an  advantage  to  the  royalist  gentry,  who 
were  horsemen.  The  infantry  was  composed  partly  of 
pikemen,  partly  of  musketeers  with  matchlocks,  the  two 
forces  being  awkwardly  combined.  Besides  the  regular, 
or,  as  Clarendon  calls  them,  commanded,  foot,  irregu- 
lar and  half-armed  levies  were  brought  into  the  field. 


538  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

Artillery,  both  siege  and  field,  was  weak  till  it  was 
improved  by  Cromwell.  Thus  the  castellated  mansions  of 
the  great  nobles  served  as  fortresses.  Basing  House,  the 
palace  of  the  Marquis  of  Winchester,  in  Hampshire,  stood 
three  sieges  before  it  was  taken  by  Cromwell.  The  nobles 
and  gentry  had  been  used  to  command  and  their  tenants 
had  been  used  to  obey.  This  gave  the  royal  army  the 
advantage  of  a  natural  organization  till  reverses  had 
taught  the  soldiers  of  the  parliament  the  necessity  of 
discipline.  The  southern  aristocracy  of  Planters  had  at 
first  the  same  advantage  over  the  northern  democracy 
in  the  American  civil  war.  The  king  had  a  first-rate 
leader  of  cavalry,  as  far  as  dash  and  enterprise  were  con- 
cerned, in  his  young  and  fiery  nephew,  Prince  Rupert. 
The  parliamentary  commander-in-chief,  Essex,  son  of 
queen  Elizabeth's  hapless  favourite,  and  divorced  husband 
of  her  who  was  afterwards  Lady  Somerset,  had  been 
chosen  rather  for  his  rank  and  popularity  among  the  sol- 
diery than  for  military  genius,  though  he  was  a  good 
soldier,  and  amid  all  temptations  and  annoyances  re- 
mained thoroughly  loyal  to  his  cause.  The  fleet  was 
on  the  side  of  the  parliament;  the  traditions  of  the  navy 
since  its  battles  with  Spain  would  be  protestant.  Parlia- 
ment thus  commanding  the  sea  could  debar  the  king  from 
foreign  aid. 

Of  money  the  king  was  always  in  want.  He  had  to 
depend  on  gifts  and  loans  from  his  partisans,  college  plate, 
and  other  casual  subventions.  The  parliament  could 
draw  from  the  long  purse  of  London  and,  commanding 
the  wealthy  districts,  it  was  able  to  levy  regular  taxes,  to 
which  the  financial  genius  of  Pym,  who  had  been  bred 
in  the  exchequer,  added  an  excise  upon  all  articles  of 


xxi  CHARLES   I  539 

consumption.  Recourse  was  had,  however,  almost  from 
the  first,  to  a  worse  source  of  revenue,  the  sequestration 
of  the  estates  of  those  who  were  styled  Delinquents. 
Lack  of  pay  compelled  the  king's  troops  to  subsist  by 
plunder,  to  which  Rupert,  trained  in  German  wars,  was 
of  himself  prone ;  they  thus  set  the  people  against  them 
and  impaired  their  own  discipline  at  the  same  time. 

Among  the  Cavaliers  were  gentlemen,  not  less  religious 
than  honourable,  and  as  virtuous  as  any  Puritan.  Gren- 
ville  had  prayers  said  at  the  head  of  all  his  regiments 
before  battle.  But  as  a  rule  the  Cavaliers  were  the 
party  of  loose  morality,  free  living,  and  profane  language. 
Their  friends  deplored  the  license,  riot,  and  blasphemy 
of  their  camps.  They  affected  the  extreme  opposed  to 
Puritanism,  and  there  was  a  hypocrisy  on  the  devil's 
side  as  well  as  on  that  of  God.  Among  the  Round- 
heads, while  there  was  much  canting  pharisaism,  there  was 
also  a  stricter  morality ;  the  morality  of  the  best  corps 
was  extremely  strict ;  and  this  told  both  in  the  field  and 
with  the  people. 

While  the  war  of  the  sword  went  on  the  war  of  the 
pen  did  not  cease.  Pamphleteering  was  active  on  both 
sides.  Now  political  journalism,  combining  news  with 
editorial  comment,  has  its  birth.  On  each  side  there  is 
a  Mercury  giving  its  one-sided  intelligence  with  its  party 
judgments.  Out  of  the  throes  of  revolution  a  new  power 
has  been  born. 

With  the  details  of  war  political  history  does  not  deal. 
The  king  sent  forth  his  Commissions  of  Array,  the  par- 
liament voted  his  commissioners  traitors,  -and  raised  an 
army  for  the  defence  of  the  king  and  parliament.  The 
closing  of  the  gates  of  Hull  against  the  king  by  the 


540  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

1642  Hothams  was  the  first  blow.  Charles  set  up  his  standard 
at  Nottingham,  and  the  wind  by  blowing  it  down  gave  an 
omen  of  his  fate.  A  large  resort  to  his  camp  showed  at 
once  the  reaction  produced  by  the  revolutionary  pro- 
ceedings of  the  parliament.  Moving  southwards  from 

1642  Shrewsbury,  he  encountered  at  Edgehill  the  army  of  the 
parliament  under  Essex,  better  equipped  and,  as  its  em- 
ployers thought,  sure  of  an  easy  victory.  Instead  of  an 
easy  victory,  there  was  a  drawn  battle,  which  would  have 
been  a  victory  for  the  king  had  not  the  fiery  Rupert,  after 
breaking  the  parliamentary  horse,  galloped  oft'  in  pursuit 
and  left  the  enemy  to  recover  the  field.  Edgehill  was  a 
confused  hustle  of  untrained  masses  under  inexperienced 
commanders.  But  the  gentry  who  fought  for  Charles 
showed  their  superiority  to  the  hired  troopers  of  the 
parliament.  Cromwell,  who  commanded  a  troop  of  par- 
liamentary light  horse,  saw  that  the  moral  force  was  with 
the  king,  and  that,  to  beat  loyalty,  enthusiasm  must  be 
enlisted  by  the  parliament.  "  Your  troops,"  he  said  to 
his  cousin  Hainpden,  "are  most  of  them  old  decayed 
serving  men  and  tapsters,  and  such  kind  of  fellows,  and 
their  troops  are  gentlemen's  sons  and  persons  of  quality. 
Do  you  think  that  the  spirits  of  such  base  and  mean 
fellows  will  ever  be  able  to  encounter  gentlemen  that 
have  honour  and  courage  and  resolution  in  them?  .  .  . 
You  must  get  men  of  a  spirit,  and  take  it  not  ill  what 
I  say  —  I  know  you  will  not  —  of  a  spirit  that  is  likely 
to  go  on  as  far  as  gentlemen  will  go,  or  else  you  will  be 
beaten  still."  In  those  words  lay  the  secret  of  ultimate 
success. 

1642  Charles  advanced  to  London  and  was  not  far  from  end- 
ing the  war  at  a  blow.  Milton's  sonnet  pleading  for  the 


xxi  CHARLES    I  641 

Muses'  bower  against  the  violence  of  the  captor  is  the 
sweet  memorial  of  the  city's  alarm.  Londoners,  however, 
were  more  warlike  then  than  they  are  now,  and  the 
trained  bands  under  Skippon  behaved  well.  The  par- 
liamentary general,  Sir  William  Waller,  had  a  run  of 
success  which  earned  him  the  title  of  William  the  Con- 
queror; but  fortune  presently  turned  against  him  and  his 
army  was  destroyed.  Bristol  fell,  weakly  surrendered,  as  1643 
a  court-martial  found,  by  its  intellectually  brilliant  gov- 
ernor, Nathaniel  Fiennes.  In  the  north  the  Fairfaxes, 
father  and  sou,  after  some  gallant  exploits,  performed  in 
conjunction  with  the  radical  populations  of  the  little 
clothing-towns,  were  overthrown  at  Adwalton  Moor. 
Hampden,  the  second  chief,  and  perhaps  the  moral  pillar 
of  the  parliamentary  cause,  went  from  a  skirmish  at 
Chalgrove  Field,  clinging  to  his  horse's  neck,  with  a 
wound  of  which  in  a  few  days  he  died.  Pym,  the  1643 
political  pillar  of  the  cause,  sank  beneath  his  load  of  toil 
and  care,  and  was  interred  in  Westminster  Abbey  with 
heraldic  pomp  which  showed  that  so  far  at  least  this  was 
a  gentleman's  revolution.  Before  he  died  he  had  to  com- 
bat a  peace  movement,  to  face  peace  mobs  crying  that 
he  was  a  traitor  and  threatening  to  tear  him  to  pieces,  to 
deal  with  a  conspiracy,  in  which  the  poet  Waller  was 
concerned  and  narrowly  escaped  with  his  head,  for  the 
betrayal  of  London  to  the  king.  His  last  service  was  a 
visit  to  the  camp  of  Essex  to  assure  himself  of  the  loyalty 
of  the  commander.  There  were  flights  of  peers  from 
London  to  Oxford,  and  had  not  the  queen's  temper  re- 
pelled them,  there  would  have  been  more. 

For  the  first  two  years  and  a  half  fortune  mocked  the 
sanguine  hopes  of  the  parliament.     The  turning-point  is 


542  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP, 

commonly  taken  to  have  been  the  siege  of  Gloucester, 
1643  formed  by  Charles  and  raised  by  Essex,  who  marched 
from  London  with  an  army  largely  composed  of  the  city 
1643  trained  bands.  In  the  battle  of  Newbury,  fought  by 
Essex  on  his  retreat,  the  trained  bands  showed  that  the 
citizen  was  still  a  soldier.  Here  fell  Falkland,  throwing 
away  his  life,  as  it  seems,  when  he  saw  that  the  hope  of 
peace  was  gone.  It  is  in  the  siege  of  Gloucester  that 
we  get  a  glimpse,  through  Clarendon,  of  the  middle  class 
Puritan  who  furnished  a  subject  for  "  Hudibras."  The 
king  having  sent  a  trumpet  with  a  summons,  "  within 
less  than  the  time  prescribed,  together  with  the  trumpeter, 
returned  two  citizens  from  the  town,  with  lean,  pale, 
sharp,  and  bald  visages,  indeed  faces  so  strange  and  un- 
usual, and  in  such  a  garb  and  posture,  that  at  once  made 
the  most  severe  countenance  merry,  and  the  most  cheerful 
hearts  sad ;  for  it  was  impossible  such  ambassadors  could 
bring  less  than  a  defiance.  The  men,  without  any  circum- 
stances of  duty  or  good  manners,  in  a  pert,  shrill,  undis- 
mayed accent,  said  they  had  brought  an  answer  from  the 
godly  city  of  Gloucester  to  the  king;  and  were  so  ready 
to  give  insolent  and  seditious  answers  to  any  question, 
as  if  their  business  were  chiefly  to  provoke  the  king  to 
violate  his  own  safe  conduct."  The  answer  of  the  godly 
city  was,  "  We,  the  inhabitants,  magistrates,  officers,  and 
soldiers,  within  this  garrison  of  Gloucester,  unto  his 
Majesty's  gracious  message  return  this  humble  answer; 
That  we  do  keep  this  city,  according  to  our  oaths  and 
allegiance,  to  and  for  the  use  of  his  Majesty  and  his  royal 
posterity;  and  do  accordingly  conceive  ourselves  wholly 
bound  to  obey  the  commands  of  his  Majesty,  signified  by 
both  Houses  of  parliament:  and  are  resolved,  by  God's 


xxi  CHARLES  I  643 

help,  to  keep  this  city  accordingly."  To  the  constitu- 
tional figment  embodied  in  this  answer  the  Roundheads 
adhered  with  a  truly  English  tenacity  of  forms. 

Necessity  had  by  this  time  compelled  the  leaders  of  the 
parliament  to  stretch  out  their  hands  for  aid  to  the  Pres- 
byterians of  Scotland.  Dire  the  necessity  must  have  been 
if  it  could  constrain  Liberals  like  Vane  and  Marten  to 
accept  not  only  the  alliance  but  the  yoke  of  an  austere 
and  narrow  theocracy  which  maintained  that  Presbyteri- 
anism  was  divine ;  which  held  the  dark  creed  of  Calvin ; 
which,  through  its  church  courts,  exercised  a  searching 
inquisition  into  private  life ;  which  enforced  the  Mosaic 
Sabbath;  which  within  a  few  months  put  thirty  witches 
to  death  in  one  county.  Only  to  the  Presbyterian 
party  in  parliament  union  with  the  Kirk  would  be  wel- 
come. As  the  conditions  of  their  assistance  the  Scotch 
required  that  England,  besides  paying  them  well,  should 
enter  into  a  Solemn  League  and  Covenant  for  the  reli- 
gious union  of  the  two  kingdoms ;  in  other  words,  for  the 
establishment  of  Presbyterianism  in  both  of  them.  Par- 
liamentary England  did  take  the  Solemn  League  and 
Covenant,  though  for  the  most  part  with  a  wry  face,  and  1643 
not  without  furtive  exceptions.  Acceptance  became  the 
regular  test  of  the  party.  A  Scotch  delegation  was 
admitted  to  the  Assembly  of  Divines.  The  Assembly 
framed  an  ecclesiastical  polity  on  the  Presbyterian  model  1647 
which  was  approved  by  parliament  and  was  set  on  foot 
in  London,  Lancashire,  and,  less  perfectly,  in  some  other 
districts.  London  saw  a  provincial  Presbyterian  synod. 
With  the  polity  was  combined  a  Presbyterian  confes- 1647- 
sion  of  faith  which  is  still  the  doctrinal  standard  of  the 
Scottish  church,  embodying  the  extreme  principles  of 


544  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

Calvin,  and  declaring  that  "  by  the  decree  of  God  for  the 
manifestation  of  his  glory  some  men  and  angels  are  pre- 
destinated unto  everlasting  life,  and  others  fore-ordained 
to  everlasting  death."  But  the  generally  slack  and  im- 
perfect adoption  of  the  system  in  England  showed  that 
there  was  little  enthusiasm  for  it  among  the  people.  In 
England  there  had  been  no  John  Knox.  The  English 
parliament,  though  it  might  be  Presbyterian,  was  not  theo- 
cratic and  had  no  intention  of  placing  itself  and  the  king- 
dom under  ecclesiastical  domination.  It  remained  true  to 
lay  supremacy,  the  characteristic  of  the  English  Reforma- 
tion of  which  Selden  and  his  circle  were  the  resolute 
upholders.  While  it  accepted  the  Presbyterian  constitu- 
tion and  the  profession  of  faith  framed  by  the  Westmin- 
ster Assembly,  it  firmly  insisted  upon  keeping  for  itself 
the  supreme  jurisdiction  and  the  power  of  the  keys,  which 
was  to  be  exercised  by  a  parliamentary  commission.  It 
sharply  questioned  the  claim  of  the  Presbyterian  organiza- 
tion to  be  divine,  and  read  the  Assembly  a  severe  lesson 
on  that  subject.  High-flying  theocrats,  especially  those  of 
the  Scotch  delegation,  deplored  such  Erastianism,  but  in 
vain. 

Nor  could  the  Scotch  and  English  Presbyterians  by 
their  combined  force  succeed  to  anything  like  the  full 
extent  of  their  fanatical  wishes  in  excluding  toleration,  a 
monster  in  their  eyes  hardly  less  hateful  than  in  those  of 
an  Inquisitor,  though  neither  they  nor  any  other  pro- 
testant  sect  ever,  like  the  Inquisition,  carried  the  rack  into 
the  recesses  of  conscience.  Heresy,  unchained  by  civil 
discord,  was  presenting  itself  to  their  alarmed  and  horri- 
fied eyes,  not  only  in  the  decorous  aud  respectable  forms 
of  the  Congregational  Independents,  such  as  Goodwin  and 


xxi  CHARLES  I  645 

Nye,  or  in  the  comparatively  decorous  and  respectable 
forms  of  Cromwell  and  his  religious  circle,  but  in  those 
of  Anabaptists,  Anti-Trinitarians,  Antinomians,  Anti-Scrip- 
turists,  Anti-Sabbatarians,  Millenarians,  Soul-Sleepers  or 
Mortalists,  Seekers,  Familists,  Fifth-Monarchy  Men,  Liber- 
tines, Muggletonians,  Ranters,  and  all  the  wild  sects  bred 
by  disordered  fancy  and  ignorant  interpretation  of  in- 
spired scriptures  in  a  time  of  feverish  excitement.  Anti- 
nomianism  was  accused,  and  very  likely  in  the  case  of 
some  maniacs  with  justice,  of  sanctifying  license  and  even 
crime,  as  Munzer  and  John  of  Leyden  had  done  in  their 
day.  Society  as  well  as  the  church  seemed  to  be  threat- 
ened by  an  anarchy  not  only  spiritual  but  moral.  Among 
the  moral  anarchists  was  numbered  John  Milton,  who, 
amid  the  din  of  political  controversy  and  the  clash  of  civil 
arms,  was  passionately  pleading,  as  an  unhappy  husband, 
for  liberty,  not  to  say  license,  of  divorce.  Parliament 
at  last  under  Presbyterian  domination  passed  an  ordinance 
for  the  punishment  of  heresy  and  blasphemy,  and  in  the 
case  of  capital  heresies,  such  as  the  denial  of  the  Trinity 
or  the  Incarnation,  with  death. 

A  joint  committee  of  both  kingdoms  was  formed  as  an 
executive.  In  it  a  historian  sees  a  foreshadowing  at  once 
of  a  union  of  England  with  Scotland,  and  of  the  cabinet 
system  of  government. 

This  was  the  hour  of  Presbyterian  ascendancy  in  the 
parliament.  Presently  Laud,  who,  since  his  impeach- 
ment, had  been  in  his  prison,  and  through  its  bars  had 
blessed  Strafford  on  the  way  to  execution,  was  brought  to 
the  block  under  a  thin  pretence  of  high  treason,  really  as  1645 
a  popish  innovator  and  an  enemy  of  the  Kirk.  The  old 
man  was  harmless,  and  his  execution  was  one  of  the  most 
VOL.  i  —  35 


646  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

savage,  and,  as  a  perversion  of  the  treason  law,  one  of 
the  most  noxious,  among  the  acts  of  the  revolution.  It 
made  him  a  party  saint;  and  in  our  day  he  has  been 
well-nigh  canonized  by  ritualists,  in  whom  he  and  his 
school  live  again,  and  who  go  nearer  than  he  went  to 
Rome,  far  outrunning  the  ceremonialism  by  which  he  gave 
offence  in  his  consecration  of  the  church  of  St.  Catherine 
Cree.  Persecution  of  catholic  priests  and  witch-burning 
also  marked  and  disgraced  the  Presbyterian's  reign. 

1643  In  the  darkest  hour  of  the  parliamentary  cause  the  light 
of  hope  had  continued  to  shine  in  the  Associated  East- 
ern Counties.     There  the  Puritan  yeomanry  was  strong. 
There,  under  the  Earl  of  Manchester,  commanded  Oliver 
Cromwell,  who,  taking  up  the  soldier's  trade  at  the  age  of 
forty-two,  had  made  himself  a  first-rate  leader  of  cavalry, 
and  had  shown   his   insight  into   the  situation   and  his 
appreciation  of  moral  force  by  forming  among  the  yeomen 
of  his  district  a  corps  in  which  strict  discipline  was  united 
with  fiery  enthusiasm,  and  which   presently  earned   for 
itself  the  name  of  the  Ironsides.     The  Scotch  army,  under 

1644  Lord   Leven   and  David   Leslie,   had    entered    England. 
Forming  a  junction  with  it,  the  parliamentary  forces  of 
the  north  under  the  Fairfaxes,  and  those  of  the  Eastern 
Counties'  Association  under  Manchester  and   Cromwell, 

K544  laid  siege  to  York.  The  city  was  held  by  the  Marquis  of 
Newcastle,  a  characteristic  figure  of  the  age,  at  once  a 
lord  of  the  still  half-feudal  north  with  a  great  body  of 
retainers,  and  an  elegant  grandee  of  the  Renaissance.  To 
save  York  Rupert  rushed  from  the  south.  He  raised  the 

1644  siege,  but,  not  content  with  that  exploit,  resolved,  against 
the  advice  of  the  marquis,  to  fight  a  pitched  battle.  On 

1644   the  edge  of  Marston  Moor,  near  York,  the  two  armies, 


xxi  CHARLES   I  547 

with  a  few  yards  of  ground  and  a  ditch  between  them, 
faced  each  other  through  a  midsummer  afternoon.  In  the 
evening,  when  the  marquis  had  retired  to  his  carriage, 
over-tension  or  accident  brought  on  a  battle,  which  came, 
not  as  it  comes  now,  with  long-range  firing  and  advance 
of  skirmishers,  but  with  sword-stroke,  with  push  of  pike, 
and  with  the  shock  of  masses  of  mailed  cavalry  hurled 
against  each  other.  Rupert's  fiery  charge  broke  the 
Roundheads  in  his  front,  but  his  headlong  pursuit  of  them 
left  the  field  to  be  won  by  Cromwell,  who,  having  also 
broken  the  troops  in  his  front,  kept  his  well-disciplined 
men  in  hand  and  turned  the  day.  The  result  was  a  com- 
plete and  bloody  victory  for  parliament,  with  the  loss  of 
the  north  for  the  king.  The  regiment  of  Newcastle's 
retainers,  called  the  Whitecoats,  showed  their  northern 
valour  and  their  feudal  fidelity  by  falling  every  man  in 
his  rank. 

Marston  was  an  Independents'  victory,  and  Cromwell, 
the  leader  of  the  Independents,  did  not  fail  to  dwell  upon 
that  fact.  "  It  had  all  the  evidences,"  he  said,  "  of  an 
absolute  victory  obtained  by  the  Lord's  blessing  upon  the 
godly  party  principally."  Of  the  Scotch,  while  some  had 
done  much  more  than  Cromwell  chose  to  admit,  some  had 
shared  the  partial  rout  of  the  left  wing.  Their  general 
had  been  swept  off  the  field  in  the-  press,  and  royalists 
delighted  to  say  that  he  had  been  taken  up  by  a  village 
constable. 

Now  came  the  inevitable  division  between  the  Pres- 
byterians, who  wanted  the  exclusive  establishment  of  their 
rigid  system  of  church  government  without  toleration  of 
any  other  sect,  and  the  Independents,  of  whom  the  more 
moderate,  such  as  Goodwin  and  Nye,  wanted  Congrega- 


548  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

tional  liberty  bounded  by  sobriety  of  doctrine,  while  the 
more  thorough-going  wanted  non-conformity  and  enthu- 
siasm without  bounds.  The  division  between  Presbyte- 
rians and  Independents  coincided  in  the  main  with  that 
between  the  patrician  and  plebeian  sections  of  the  parlia- 
mentary party.  Cromwell  had  no  hatred  of  gentlemen ; 
he  said  that  he  honoured  a  gentleman  who  was  so  indeed ; 
he  called  himself  a  gentleman  in  speaking  of  his  birth. 
But*  he  wanted  good  soldiers,  and  the  low-born  man  as 
well  as  the  sectary  who  could  fight  was  welcomed  to 
the  ranks  of  his  Ironsides.  To  him  a  good  officer  was 
a  good  officer,  though  he  might  once,  as  sneering  aris- 
tocrats said,  have  filled  a  dung-cart. 

Congregationalism  stopped  short  of  liberty  of  conscience. 
The  few  minds  into  which  that  principle  fully  found  its  way 
were  generally  prepared  for  it  by  the  experience  of  perse- 
cution. Roger  Williams  had  preached  it  and  won  recog- 
nition for  it  in  Rhode  Island,  but  to  England  he  preached 
in  vain.  Of  the  churches  the  Baptist  deserves  the  credit 
of  being  its  first  sanctuary.  The  English  Baptists  in 
Amsterdam  had  said  in  their  confession  of  faith,  "  The 
magistrate  is  not  to  meddle  with  religion  or  matters  of 
conscience,  nor  compel  men  to  this  or  that  form  of  religion, 
because  Christ  is  the  king  and  law-giver  of  the  church 
and  conscience."  Cromwell  might  not  refuse  to  part  with 
a  good  soldier  who  was  denounced  to  him  as  an  Anabap- 
tist, but,  while  his  heart  was  large,  and  he  flouted  religious 
squeamishness  when  it  crossed  a  practical  need,  it  is  not 
likely  that  he  had  distinctly  embraced  the  principle  of 
liberty  of  conscience.  Nearer  to  embracing  it  was  Milton, 
in  whose  broad  and  exalted  allegiance  to  freedom  of 
opinion,  bounded,  it  appears,  only  by  the  public  morality 


xxi  CHARLES   I  549 

which  must  bound  all  freedom,  it  may  perhaps  be  said  that 
the  principle  was  virtually  born.  Roman  Catholicism  was 
still  regarded  by  the  whole  protestant  body  not  only  as 
idolatry,  but  as  potential  treason,  which  might  become 
actual  treason  at  the  bidding  of  the  pope.  Anglicanism 
had  fatally  identified  itself  with  the  party  of  arbitrary 
government.  For  the  people  of  the  Mass  or  of  the  Book 
of  Common  Prayer  there  was  among  the  parliamentarians 
of  whatever  shade  no  toleration. 

While  the  Independent  chief  had  triumphed  in  the  1644 
north,  Essex,  the  Presbyterian  chief,  had  met  with  dis- 
aster in  the  west.  Lured  by  false  hopes  of  a  sympathy 
which  he  was  not  likely  to  find  among  a  population  of 
primitive  character  and  swayed  by  the  royalist  gentry,  he 
had  entangled  himself  among  the  hills  of  Cornwall.  There 
he  had  been  surrounded  and  lost  the  whole  of  his  infantry. 
Charles's  letter  of  thanks  to  the  Cornishmen  may  still  be 
read  upon  church  walls.  The  Presbyterian  parliament 
received  its  defeated  general  with  Roman  magnanimity, 
but  Presbyterian  ascendancy  received  a  sore  blow  in  the 
capitulation  of  Lostwithiel  as  well  as  in  the  victory  of  164* 
Mars  ton. 

The  Presbyterians  saw  their  danger  and  opened  negoti-  1645 
ations  with  the  king,  whose  commissioners  met  theirs  at 
Uxbridge.  The  Scotch,  strong  monarchists  as  well  as 
strong  Presbyterians,  chiefly  impelled  the  movement. 
Establishment  of  Presbyterianism  and  temporary  resig- 
nation of  the  militia,  that  is,  the  power  of  the  sword, 
were  the  terms  offered  to  Charles.  To  these  he  would 
not  assent.  To  the  resignation  of  the  power  of  the  sword 
his  queen,  who  swayed  his  counsels  from  Paris,  would  by 
no  means  agree,  and  the  treaty,  after  much  futile  discus- 


550  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

sion,  failed.  The  king  was  encouraged  in  resistance  by 
1644  the  meteoric  victories  of  Montrose,  who,  having  passed 
from  the  Covenanting  to  the  royalist  side,  was,  with  an 
army  composed  of  wild  Highlanders  and  Irish,  together 
with  a  handful  of  Scotch  gentlemen,  overthrowing  army 
1644-  after  army  of  the  Covenant  and  its  Presbyterian  chief, 
Argyle.  By  his  rejection  of  Presbyterianism  Charles  once 
more  welded  the  Scotch,  who  had  before  been  inclined 
towards  him,  to  the  parliament.  The  overtures  of  parlia- 
ment were  always  loaded  with  the  exclusion  from  par- 
don of  a  number  of  the  king's  friends,  to  which  Charles 
honourably  refused  his  consent. 

Alarmed  by  the  rising  star  of  Cromwell  and  the  grow- 
ing force  of  the  sectaries,  the  Presbyterian  and  aristocratic 
party  in  the  two  Houses  scarcely  desired  to  conquer.  This 

1644  had  become  apparent  when  at  the  second  battle  of  New- 
bury  the  Presbyterian  and  aristocratic  commander   Man- 
chester failed  to  press  his  advantage  and  allowed  the  king's 
army  to  retire  unmolested  and  afterwards  to  return  and 
carry  off   its  cannon.     High  words  had  then  passed  be- 
tween Manchester  and  Cromwell,  Cromwell  being  resolved 
to  conquer,  as  he  saw  that  there  was  no  other  way  to  peace. 
The  thorough-going  party  now  determined  to  get  rid  of 
lukewarm   leadership.     This    they    effected   by    carrying 

1645  through    parliament    a    Self-Denying    Ordinance,    under 
purist  pretences,  requiring  all  the  members  of  either  House 
of  parliament  within  forty  days  to  lay  down  their  offices 
or  commands.     The  Ordinance  did  not  forbid  re-appoint- 
ment, and  Cromwell,  indispensable  to  victory,  was  thus 
retained.     At  the  same  time  and  with  the  same  view  to  deci- 

1645   sive  action  the  army  was  remodelled.     Instead  of  the  local 
levies,  such  as  that  of  the  Eastern  Counties'  Association, 


xxr  CHARLES   I  551 

which  were  with  difficulty  brought  to  act  outside  their 
own  districts,  it  was  resolved  to  form  a  more  regular  and 
national  army.  This  was  the  New  Model.  It  was  freely 
recruited  from  all  sources  and  partly  by  impressment. 
But  its  commanders  and  the  core  of  it  were  Independent, 
and  their  spirit  diffused  itself  through  the  mass.  At  its 
head  was  placed  Fairfax,  the  parliamentary  chief  in  the 
north.  The  new  general  was  owner  of  a  great  estate  and 
heir  to  a  peerage,  a  disinterested  patriot,  a  man  of  literary 
tastes  and  a  writer  of  verses  as  well  as  a  soldier,  a  kins- 
man of  the  translator  of  Tasso,  and  one  of  the  inheritors 
of  the  protestant  chivalry  of  which  Spenser  was  the  poet. 
His  first  act,  when  he  afterwards  occupied  Oxford,  was  to 
place  a  guard  over  the  library  of  the  University. 

The  king's  army,  after  storming  and  ruthlessly  sacking 
Leicester,  met  the  New  Model  at  Naseby,  and  was  totally  1645 
overthrown,  Rupert,  as  usual,  after  a  victorious  charge, 
going  headlong  off  the  field  and  leaving  the  day  to  Crom- 
well. Again  Cromwell  emphasized  the  share  of  the  Inde- 
pendents in  the  great  victory.  "  Honest  men,"  he  wrote 
to  Lenthall,  "served  you  faithfully  in  this  action.  Sir, 
they  are  trusty ;  I  beseech  you,  in  the  name  of  God,  not 
to  discourage  them.  .  .  .  He  that  ventures  his  life  for  the 
liberty  of  his  country,  I  wish  to  trust  God  for  the  liberty 
of  his  conscience,  and  you  for  the  liberty  he  fights  for." 
This  paragraph  was  omitted  by  the  Presbyterian  and 
moderatist  parliament  in  sending  Cromwell's  letter  to  the 
press. 

Naseby  was  decisive.  Its  moral  effect  on  the  king's  cause 
was  enhanced  by  the  capture  of  his  papers,  a  selection  of 
which  the  parliament  published  under  the  title  of  "The 
King's  Cabinet  Opened."  Most  of  the  letters  were  drafts 


552  THE  UNITED  KINGDOM  CHAP. 

or  copies  of  those  written  by  Charles  to  his  wife.  The 
nation  saw  that  Charles,  while  negotiating  with  the  Houses 
at  Westminster,  had  never  regarded  them  as  a  lawful  parlia- 
ment ;  that  he  had  intrigued  for  the  landing  in  England  of 
an  Irish  army  and  of  the  savage  mercenaries  of  the  Duke 
of  Lorraine ;  that  he  had  been  prepared  to  purchase  catho- 
lic aid  by  abolishing  the  laws  against  English  catholics ; 
worst  of  all,  that  no  reliance  could  be  placed  upon  his  word. 
"  The  Key  of  the  King's  Cabinet,"  wrote  a  London  pam- 
phleteer, "as  it  hath  unlocked  the  mystery  of  former 
treaties,  so  I  hope  it  will  lock  up  our  minds  from  thoughts  of 
future."  It  may  be  surmised  that  the  king  in  writing  to 
the  queen,  who  was  bent  upon  the  recovery  of  arbitrary 
power,  might  say  something  for  the  purpose  of  pacifying 
her  mind ;  but  for  this  the  readers  of  "  The  King's  Cabinet 
Opened  "  were  not  likely  to  make  allowance.  Soon  after 
Naseby  Montrose's  marvellous  career  of  victories  was  closed 
1645  by  his  total  defeat  at  Philiphaugh,  and  the  last  hope  of 
Charles  was  gone. 

Fairfax  and  Cromwell  had  still  much  work  to  do  in  ex- 
tinguishing the  embers  of  the  war,  particularly  in  Wales 
and  the  western  counties.  In  Monmouthshire  the  catho- 
lic Marquis  of  Worcester,  king  of  those  parts,  whose 
princely  revenues  had  at  first  furnished  Charles  with 
money  to  take  the  field,  made  the  last  stand  for  him  in 
his  palace  castle  of  Raglan.  Bristol  was  surrendered  by 

1645  Rupert,  who  thus  covered  the  disgrace  of  Fiennes.     Ox- 

1646  ford  itself,  the  citadel  of  royalism,  fell.     The  king's  Great 
Seal  was  broken.     The  records  of  his  anti-parliament  had 

1646  been  burnt.  When  in  the  west  the  stout  old  royalist, 
Sir  Jacob  Astley,  surrendered  with  the  king's  last  remain- 
ing force,  he  said  to  his  captors,  "  My  masters,  you  have 


xxi  CHARLES   I  653 

now  done  your  work,  and  you  may  go  play;  unless  you 
will  fall  out  among  yourselves."  Fall  out  among  them- 
selves they  did,  as  revolutionists  generally  have  done, 
when  the  work  of  destruction  was  complete  and  that  of 
reconstruction  took  its  place. 

After  some  aimless  and  hopeless  wanderings  the  king 
rode  northward  and  put  himself  into  the  hands  of  the  1646 
Scotch,  whose  armies  still  lingered  on  the  south  of  the  bor- 
der, waiting  for  arrears  of  pay.  At  Newcastle  nineteen 
propositions  were  submitted  to  him  by  commissioners  from  1646 
the  parliament,  and  were  pressed  on  his  acceptance  by  the 
Scotch.  The  chief  propositions  were  the  abolition  of  epis- 
copacy, the  acceptance  of  the  Covenant,  the  establishment 
of  Presbyterianism,  and  the  surrender  of  the  militia  to  par- 
liament for  twenty  years.  Could  the  king  have  brought 
himself  to  consent  to  the  religious  articles  he  would  at  once, 
as  a  Covenanting  king,  have  had  the  Scotch  upon  his  side. 
But  in  his  attachment  to  the  church  of  England  Charles 
was  immovable  on  political  as  well  as  on  religious  grounds. 
He  told  his  wife,  ever  ready  as  a  catholic  to  sacrifice 
a  heretic  church  if  she  could  keep  the  sword,  that 
religion  would  sooner  recover  the  sword  than  the  sword 
would  religion.  He  rated  high  the  political  influence, 
while  he  might  well  confide  in  the  absolutism,  of  the 
Anglican  clergy.  In  debates  with  Henderson,  the  Scotch 
prophet  who  was  sent  to  convert  him,  he  firmly  and  ably 
defended  his  Anglican  faith.  The  Scotch  now  gave  him  up  1017 
to  the  English  parliament.  They  are  accused  of  having 
sold  him.  This  they  certainly  did  not,  though,  as  to  the 
precise  moment  of  the  surrender,  they  may  not  have  been 
without  an  eye  to  the  arrears  of  their  pay,  which  they 
received  at  the  same  time.  Charles's  Anglicanism  was, 


554  THE   UNITED  KINGDOM  CHAP. 

perhaps,  almost  as  much  political  as  religious ;  but  to  it  he 
may  fairly  be  called  a  martyr. 

The  war  over,  the  nation  craved  for  a  peaceful  settle- 
ment. All  were  weary  of  carnage,  havoc,  confiscation, 
excise,  assessments  for  the  pay  of  the  army,  financial 
confusion,  depreciation  of  property,  reduction  of  rents,  and 
depression  of  trade.  Most  grievous  was  the  war  to  the 
labouring  poor,  who  felt  its  evils  and  bore  its  burdens  with- 
out caring  much  for  either  party,  and  at  last  had  turned 
out  with  clubs  in  their  hands  to  protect  their  cottages,  corn- 
bins,  and  poultry-yards  against  both.  Among  the  chief 
sufferers  by  the  civil  fury  were  the  royalist  and  episcopal 
clergy,  of  whom  a  large  number,  according  to  their  martyr- 
ologists  two  thousand,  had  been  ejected  from  their  livings, 
a  fifth  only  of  their  income  being  paid  by  way  of  indem- 
nity to  their  wives  and  children.  They  had  identified 
themselves  with  political  usurpation,  and  were  deprived  on 
political  as  well  as  religious  grounds.  Charles  himself  half 
justified  the  ejection  in  saying  that  the  church  would  give 
him  back  the  sword.  It  was  also  alleged  that  Puritan 
clergymen  had  been  plundered  of  their  livings  under  Laud 
and  that  compensation  was  due  them  from  the  spoilers. 
But  it  has  been  truly  said  that  this  proscription  extin- 
guished whatever  hope  there  was  of  reconciliation  between 
the  Anglicans  and  the  other  sections  of  the  religious  com- 
munity. 

There  is  reason  to  believe  that,  as  usual,  with  revolution- 
ary ascendancy  and  sequestration  had  come  corruption, 
that  suitors  to  the  parliament  could  do  nothing  without  a 
bribe,  and  that  saints  and  patriots  were  making  scandalous 
gains.  The  Speaker,  Lenthall,  among  others,  was  accused 
of  growing  rich  at  the  public  cost.  Large  gifts  of  money 


xxi  r  CHARLES   I  555 

or  estates  had  been  voted  to  powerful  men  for  their  ser- 
vices to  the  commonwealth,  among  others  to  Cromwell, 
who,  however,  laid  a  great  part  of  the  gift  on  the  altar  of 
his  country.  Of  corruption  as  well  as  of  bloodshed  the 
people  were  sick. 

How  was  the  peaceful  settlement  to  be  made?  Sir 
Jacob  Astley's  prognostication  was  speedily  fulfilled.  On 
the  morrow  of  victory  began  the  irrepressible  conflict  be- 
tween the  two  sections  of  the  victorious  party,  the  Presby- 
terians and  the  Independents ;  the  Presbyterians  still 
aiming  at  a  monarchy  under  the  control  of  parliament 
with  a  Presbyterian  church  establishment  and  no  tolera- 
tion ;  the  Independents  still  aiming  at  Congregational 
freedom,  and  the  more  thorough-going  of  them  at  reli- 
gious freedom  unlimited  for  all  protestants.  Of  republicans 
there  were  as  yet  but  few.  The  foremost  were  Henry 
Marten  and  Lilburne.  Marten  was  a  libertine  of  the 
political  as  well  as  of  the  moral  sphere,  who,  when  a  ques- 
tion arose  about  the  provision  of  a  chaplain  for  the  king, 
could  say  that  he  would  like  to  provide  the  king  at  once 
with  two  chaplains  to  prepare  him  for  heaven.  Lilburne 
was  a  born  agitator  with  the  qualifications  as  well  as  the 
propensities  of  his  tribe,  the  enemy  of  each  established 
authority  in  turn,  aiming,  if  he  could  be  said  to  have  any 
aim,  at  direct  government  by  the  people,  which  would 
have  been  practically  no  government  at  all,  of  a  courage 
proved  in  the  field,  a  ready  writer  with  a  popular  style, 
and  never  to  be  put  down.  His  devotion,  disinterested 
unless  vanity  is  interest,  to  popular  right,  earned  him  the 
invaluable  nickname  of  "  Honest  John."  He  and  his  dis- 
ciples were  well  named  Levellers,  for,  had  their  schemes 
taken  effect,  nothing  above  the  dead  level  of  a  vast  popu- 


556  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

lace  would  have  remained.  Wildman  and  Rainsborough 
were  also  leaders  of  the  extreme  party. 

Vacancies  in  the  House  of  Commons  had  been  filled  up 
to  the  number  of  about  a  hundred  and  fifty  by  the  election 
of  new  members  called  Recruiters.  The  Recruiters  in- 
cluded some  new  men  of  mark,  such  as  Ire  ton,  Cromwell's 
son-in-law,  a  man  of  legal  culture,  a  political  philosopher, 
and  at  the  same  time  a  man  of  action ;  Fleetwood,  a  deeply 
religious  soldier;  Ludlow  and  Algernon  Sidney,  "com- 
monwealth's men "  or  republicans,  like  Marten,  of  the 
Roman  mould.  Notwithstanding  these  accessions  the 
Presbyterians  still  had  the  majority.  Outside  the  House 
they  had  with  them  London,  the  commercial  wealth  and 
respectability  of  which  shrank  from  sectarian  violence,  and 
the  Scotch,  whose  commissioners  remained  to  lend  moral 
support  to  their  friends,  though  their  army  had  been  with- 
drawn. Moderation,  fear  of  revolutionary  violence,  hatred 
of  military  rule  made  for  them  in  the  country  at  large. 
Their  leaders,  Holies,  Stapleton,  Maynard,  and  Glyn,  were 
politicians  or  men  of  the  gown,  and  of  comparatively 
little  mark,  manifestly  wanting  in  statesmanship  though 
they  seem  not  to  have  been  wanting  in  courage. 

The  Independent  party  was  in  the  minority  in  both 
Houses  of  parliament,  though  it  generally  received  the 
support  of  Selden  and  the  other  lawyers  who  were  opposed 
to  the  Presbyterians  from  their  hatred  of  ecclesiastical  dom- 
ination. It  had  its  stronghold  in  the  Army,  and  its  leaders, 
religious  and  political,  in  Cromwell  and  Ireton.  Fair- 
fax, the  commander-in-chief  and  the  victor  of  Naseby,  was 
simply  a  soldier  of  the  cause,  disinterested,  single-minded, 
bent  on  performing  his  military  duty  to  the  common- 
wealth, comparatively  little  of  a  politician  and  some- 


xxi  CHARLES  I  567 

what  under  the  influence  of  a  royalist  wife.  The  army 
might  truly  say  of  itself,  as  it  did,  that  it  was  not  an  army 
of  mercenaries,  like  those  which  have  supported  military 
usurpations.  It  was  a  body  of  English  citizens,  and  not 
the  least  worthy  of  English  citizens,  in  arms  for  a  national 
cause.  It  had  saved  that  cause,  and  it  had  a  right  to  a 
voice  in  the  settlement.  Cromwell,  who  was  the  soul  of 
it,  was  not,  like  Bonaparte,  a  child  of  the  camp ;  he  was  a 
religious  patriot,  who,  when  he  was  past  middle  age,  had 
drawn  his  sword  in  the  service  of  conscience.  He  pro- 
fessed, and  with  apparent  sincerity,  his  desire  of  keeping 
the  army  in  subordination  to  the  civil  government. 
Mutiny  he  quelled  with  decisive  firmness,  heedless  of  risk 
to  his  popularity  as  well  as  to  his  person.  Power  and  pre- 
eminence had  come  to  him,  but  there  is  no  reason  to  think 
that  he  had  as  yet  formed  any  design  of  revolutionary  ambi- 
tion. There  is  even  reason  to  believe  that  he  thought  of 
transferring  himself  and  his  veterans  to  the  field  of  religious 
war  in  Germany.  His  ecclesiastical  ideal  was  protestant 
comprehension.  His  political  ideal  may  be  said  to  have 
been  parliamentary  monarchy  with  fair  representation  and 
law  reform.  It  was  towards  this  that  he  worked  when 
supreme  power  at  last  came  into  his  hands.  It  may  be 
true  that  he  did  not  exercise  much  forecast  but  was  guided 
by  circumstance,  which  he  called  the  finger  of  God,  and 
was  content  with  understanding  and  controlling  the  actual 
situation. 

Neither  of  the  great  parties  as  yet  thought  a  settlement 
possible  without  the  king.      The  nation  at  heart  was  still 
monarchical.     The  road  of  Charles  from  Newcastle,  where 
the  Scotch  surrendered  him,  to  Holmby  in  Northampton-   1647 
shire,    where    the    parliament    fixed    his    residence,    was 


658  THE   UNITED    KINGDOM  CHAF. 

thronged  by  crowds  of  people,  some  of  whom  came  to  be 
touched  by  him  for  the  king's  evil ;  and  the  church  bells 
were  rung  in  his  honour.  He  was  approached  by  the  leaders 
of  both  parties,  and  a  long  and  tangled  series  of  negotia- 
tions ensued.  The  questions,  as  before,  were  the  settle- 
ment of  the  church  and  the  command  of  the  military  force, 
to  which,  as  usual,  was  added  the  treatment  of  Delin- 
quents, or  men  who  had  been  in  arms  for  the  king  against 
the  parliament,  a  point  on  which  the  king  was  credit- 
ably tenacious,  remembering  Strafford.  The  lands  of  the 
bishops  and  cathedral  chapters,  which  parliament  was  con- 
fiscating, formed  a  fourth  matter  of  dispute.  The  Pres- 
byterians were  most  inflexible  on  the  church  question; 
the  Independents,  less  tenacious  on  the  church  question, 
were  more  exacting  in  their  political  demands. 

Feeling  his  hold  on  national  sentiment,  and  seeing  that 
both  parties  needed  him,  Charles  thought  to  play  them 
off  against  each  other  and  in  the  end  set  his  foot  upon 
both.  Had  the  men  with  whom  he  was  dealing  been 
weak,  his  game  might  have  been  successful.  As  he  had  to 
deal  with  Cromwell  and  Ireton  it  proved  his  ruin.  Through 
the  net  of  intrigue  and  deceit  which  he  wove  they  burst  at 
last  by  taking  his  life.  A  solution  of  the  problem  was  not 
easy,  since  it  was  certain  that  Charles,  replaced  on  his 
throne,  would  not,  like  a  puppet  king  of  our  day,  acquiesce 
in  gilded  impotence  and  lip  worship,  but  would  seek  to 
regain  real  power,  while  parliament,  meeting  only  at  his 
summons,  and  liable  to  dissolution  at  his  pleasure,  would 
have  no  valid  security  against  his  attempt.  He  had,  more- 
over, shown  that  he  held  it  lawful  for  the  purpose  of  sav- 
ing the  church  and  throne  to  practise  deception,  and  that 
he  deemed  himself  not  bound  by  concessions  made  under 


xxi  CHARLES   I  559 

compulsion.  The  provisional  establishment  of  Presbyteri- 
anism  and  the  temporary  transfer  of  the  militia  to  the 
parliament,  to  which,  when  hard  pressed,  he  at  last  in- 
timated his  willingness  to  consent,  would  have  been  of 
little  value,  since  he  would  certainly  have  employed  the 
time  in  machinations  for  the  reversal  of  both  concessions. 
Now,  as  afterwards  in  1688,  the  most  hopeful  course  appar- 
ently was  the  dethronement  of  Charles  in  favour  of  one  of 
his  sons,  or,  what  would  have  been  better,  in  favour  of  his 
nephew,  the  Elector  Palatine,  whose  weakness  would  in 
reality  have  been  a  qualification  for  the  place.  This  idea 
was  in  fact  entertained ;  but  the  Prince  of  Wales  would  not 
take  his  father's  crown ;  the  second  son,  the  Duke  of  York, 
was  spirited  away,  and  the  third,  Gloucester,  was  a  child. 
The  idea  of  what  is  now  called  constitutional  monarchy, 
a  royal  figure-head,  with  advisers  who  really  govern  desig- 
nated by  parliament,  could  enter  nobody's  mind  distinctly 
at  that  time.  To  show  the  tenacity  of  old  ideas,  peerages 
for  parliamentary  chiefs  were  subjects  of  speculation. 

The  parliament,  in  which  the  majority  was  still  Presby- 
terian, wanted  to  disband  the  army.  The  army  was  re- 
solved not  to  be  disbanded,  and  had  a  good  ground  for 
resistance  in  the  shape  of  heavy  arrears  of  pay,  which  the 
parliament,  with  its  finances  in  disorder  notwithstanding 
its  sequestration  of  Delinquents  and  confiscation  of  the 
lands  of  bishops  and  chapters,  was  unable  to  discharge. 
But  the  controversy  presently  extended  beyond  arrears  of 
pay  or  any  grievance  of  a  merely  military  kind.  The  army 
became  a  political  organization,  with  representative  agents 
entitled  Adjutators,  and  put  forth  political  manifestoes  and 
demands.  The  leaven  of  the  political  Levellers,  whose 
prophet  was  John  Lilburne,  worked  in  the  soldiers'  quar- 


660  THE  UNITED  KINGDOM  CUAP. 

ters.  With  it  worked  the  leaven  of  religious  enthusiasts 
and  visionaries  such  as  the  Fifth  Monarchy  Men,  of  whom 
the  New  Model  general,  Harrison,  a  man  of  humble  origin, 
but  high  standing  as  a  soldier,  was  the  chief,  and  who 
called  for  the  immediate  establishment  of  the  kingdom  of 
Christ  on  earth,  but  did  not  propose  to  inaugurate  it  by 
complying  with  the  injunction  to  Peter  and  putting  up 
the  sword  into  the  sheath.  The  revolution,  at  the  out- 
set and  through  the  greater  part  of  its  course,  had  been  a 
movement  of  the  upper  and  middle  class  under  leadership 
largely  aristocratic;  now  the  abyss  of  democracy  began  to 
yawn.  As  the  parliament  had  sought  to  bring  the  king 
under  its  control,  these  revolutionists  of  the  New  Model 
army  sought  to  bring  the  parliament  under  the  control  of 
the  people,  whose  sovereignty  they  proclaimed  aloud.  They 
demanded  manhood  suffrage,  biennial  parliaments,  and  dis- 
solution of  parliament  only  with  its  own  consent.  They 
demanded  fundamental  laws  for  the  preservation  of  popular 
right  which  the  parliament  should  have  no  power  to  repeal. 
They  called  angrily  on  the  existing  House  of  Commons  to 
bring  its  own  tenure  to  a  close.  Questions  and  problems  of 
our  own  time  put  in  an  appearance  before  their  hour. 
Manhood  suffrage  was  discussed ;  it  was  vindicated  on  the 
ground  of  right ;  it  was  combated  on  the  ground  of  policy, 
which  required  that  the  voters  should  have  a  stake  in  the 
country,  and  for  the  reason  that  poverty  would  be  open 
to  corruption.  Ireton,  the  philosophic  soldier,  was  the  chief 
thinker:  Lilburne  the  chief  agitator.  Ireton's  Heads  of 
Proposals  and  Lilburne's  Agreement  of  the  People,  each 
of  them  embodying  a  democratic  scheme  of  government, 
were  the  chief  manifestoes.  From  sovereignty  of  the  parlia- 
ment it  was  coming  to  sovereignty  of  the  people.  Sover- 


xxi  CHARLES   I  501 

eignty  of  the  people  direct  was  the  aim  of  the  impetuous 
Lilburne,  while  the  philosophic  Ireton  was  for  a  more  tem- 
pered constitution.  Ireton's  scheme  for  an  ecclesiastical 
polity  did  not  abolish  episcopacy,  which  to  Independents 
appeared  a  less  evil  than  Presbyterian  rigour,  but  it  took 
away  from  the  bishops  the  power  of  coercion  or  of  calling 
in  the  civil  magistrate  to  enforce  their  censures,  while 
it  abrogated  all  laws  binding  to  attendance  at  church,  and 
all  restrictions  on  religious  meetings  or  free  preaching. 
Thorough-going  reformers  did  not  fail  to  call  for  the  aboli- 
tion of  the  House  of  Lords.  Cromwell's  influence  in  the 
conferences  held  among  the  politicians  of  the  New  Model 
was  conservative.  He  wanted  to  rebuild  on  the  old  foun- 
dations, though  with  securities  for  liberty,  above  all  for 
religious  liberty,  and  to  keep  in  touch  with  the  spirit 
and  traditions  of  the  nation.  Manhood  suffrage  he  dep- 
recated as  tending  to  anarchy,  and  generally  he  let  it  be 
seen  that  he  hoped  little  from  sweeping  change.  With 
his  monarchical  tendencies  he  seems  never  to  have  parted, 
though  he  was  constrained  for  a  time  to  break  with 
monarchy.  At  a  conference  held  somewhat  later  be- 
tween the  leaders  of  the  House  and  those  of  the  army 
he  disgusted  Ludlow  and  other  republicans  by  keeping 
himself  "  in  the  clouds "  and  refusing  to  declare  for  a 
monarchy,  aristocracy,  or  democracy,  maintaining  that  any 
one  of  them  might  be  good  in  itself  or  for  the  particular 
country,  according  as  Providence  should  direct.  He  was 
convinced,  he  subsequently  said,  that  a  republic  was  desir- 
able, but  not  convinced  that  it  was  feasible.  All  the 
schemes  of  the  republicans  or  extreme  politicians  of  any 
kind  for  the  government  of  the  nation  by  a  parliament 
freely  elected  were  practically  suicidal,  since  a  parliament 
VOL.  i  —  36 


562  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

freely  elected  would  certainly  have  been  adverse  to  their 
cause  and  would  have  restored  the  king. 

To  keep  touch  with  the  army,  to  retain  influence  over 
it,  so  as  to  be  able  to  speak  to  parliament  and  the  king 
in  its  name  and  with  assurance  of  its  support,  without 
sharing  the  revolutionary  violence  or  the  chimeras  of  its 
wilder  spirits,  was  the  arduous  task  of  Cromwell  and  the 
other  Independent  leaders.  Mutiny  in  such  an  army 
would  be  more  terrible  than  battle  itself.  Yet  Crom- 
well, when  in  the  sequel  he  was  called  upon  to  face  it, 
showed  not  less  resolution  and  decision  than  sympathy 
with  his  comrades  in  arms  and  reluctance  to  shed  their 
blood.  He  dashed,  sword  in  hand,  into  the  mutinous 
ranks,  arrested  the  ringleaders,  and  by  court-martial  sen- 
tenced to  death  three  of  them.  The  three  were  allowed 
to  cast  lots  for  life,  and  one  only  died. 

1647  The  first  blow  openly  struck  by  the  army  chiefs  at  the 
parliament  was  the  abduction  of  the  king,  who  was  carried 
off  from  Holmby  House  by  Cornet  Joyce  of  Fairfax's  Life 
Guards,  and  when  he  asked  for  the  commission,  was  bidden 
by  the  Cornet  to  "  behold  the  troop,"  which  he  playfully 
pronounced  a  good  warrant  and  fairly  writ.  Charles  was 
not  sorry  to  get  out  of  the  hands  of  the  narrow  and  sour- 
visaged  Presbyterians,  who  melted  down  his  chapel  plate 
for  a  dinner  service,  and  denied  him  a  household  and  an 
Anglican  chaplain,  into  those  of  the  Independents,  who 
were  inclined  to  treat  him  with  more  indulgence,  partly 
perhaps  because,  being  of  lower  rank,  they  felt  his  majesty 
more.  The  Independents  allowed  him  to  be  visited  by 
his  children,  and  Cromwell,  who  saw  the  re-union,  being 
himself  a  very  loving  husband  and  father,  was  moved  to 
tears  of  sympathy  by  the  sight.  It  is  a  doubtful  compli- 


xxi  CHAELES   I  563 

merit  to  Cromwell's  foresight  or  sagacity  to  say  that  if 
Charles  would  have  trusted  him  and  accepted  his  terms 
he  would  certainly  have  replaced  him  on  the  throne. 
The  respect  shown  Charles  by  the  Independents,  and  the 
manifest  widening  of  the  breach  between  them  and  the 
Presbyterians,  confirmed  the  king  in  the  belief  that  he 
had  only  to  be  patient  and  keep  up  the  game  of  intrigue 
with  both  parties  and  with  the  Scotch,  to  a  large  section 
of  whom  he  had  also  reason  to  look  for  aid,  in  order  to 
bring  about  his  unconditional  reinstatement. 

A  dead-lift  effort  of  the  parliament  to  disband  the  army  1647 
was  met  by  the  solemn  engagement  of  the  army  not  to  be 
disbanded.  The  parliament,  in  desperate  mood,  ordered 
London  to  be  fortified  and  forbade  the  approach  of  the 
army  within  forty  miles.  In  defiance  of  the  injunction  the 
army  advanced  to  Uxbridge.  There  it  denounced  eleven  1647 
of  the  leading  Presbyterian  members  of  the  House  of 
Commons,  including  Stapleton,  Holies,  Glyn,  and  May- 
nard,  and  demanded  their  impeachment.  Parliament  gave 
way,  voted  the  eleven  members  leave  of  absence,  demol- 
ished the  fortifications  of  London,  and  appointed  commis-  1647 
sioners  to  treat  with  the  army.  The  treaty  failed;  the 
quarrel  broke  out  again.  The  members  of  the  Indepen- 
dent minority  in  the  two  Houses  seceded  and  presented 
themselves  in  the  camp.  The  army  then  entered  London 
and  marched  through  the  main  streets  to  display  its  over- 
whelming power.  It  kept  its  discipline,  however,  strictly, 
and  was  guilty  of  no  outrage.  But  parliament  had  suc- 
cumbed to  military  force,  though  we  have  always  to  re- 
member that  the  military  force  in  this  case  was  a  body, 
not  of  praetorians  or  janissaries,  but  of  men  who  had  fought 
for  a  public  cause. 


664  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

1647  The  king  is  now  placed  at  Hampton  Court.  There  the 
parleyings  with  him,  both  on  the  part  of  the  Presbyte- 
rians with  the  Scotch  commissioners  their  allies,  and  on 
that  of  the  Independent  leaders,  still  go  on,  neither  section 
seeing  its  way  to  a  settlement  without  him,  while  he  dal- 
lies with  them  both  and  plays  his  waiting  game.  He  is 
meantime  corresponding  with  the  queen  in  Paris,  who 
continues  to  cherish  hopes  of  foreign  intervention  in  his 
favour,  and  imperiously  dissuades  him  from  concession. 
Thorough-going  men  in  the  army,  on  the  other  hand,  such 
as  Harrison  and  Rainsborough,  regard  these  parleyings 
with  the  king  as  treason  to  God  and  the  cause.  Crom- 
well loses  the  confidence  of  his  party,  and  his  life  is  sup- 
posed to  be  threatened  by  the  Levellers.  He  is  at  last 
undeceived  as  to  the  king's  game.  According  to  an  anec- 
dote, which  seems  pretty  well  attested,  he  was  informed 
that  a  messenger  bearing,  unknown  to  himself,  a  letter 
from  Charles  to  Henrietta  sewn  up  in  his  saddle,  would 
at  a  certain  hour  be  at  the  Blue  Boar  Inn  in  Holborn. 

1647  He,  with  Ireton,  both  of  them  being  disguised  as  troopers, 
waylaid  the  messenger,  ripped  open  his  saddle,  found  the 
letter,  and  read  the  proofs  of  the  king's  duplicity. 

Hints,  from  what  quarter  is  uncertain,  were  conveyed  to 
the  king  of  danger  to  his  life.  He  fled  with  his  attend- 
ants, Ashburnham  and  Berkeley,  from  Hampton  Court 
and  put  himself  into  the  hands  of  Colonel  Hammond,  the 

1647  Governor  of  Carisbrooke  Castle,  in  the  Isle  of  Wight, 
who,  though  an  Independent  and  a  connection  of  Crom- 
well, was  understood  to  have  taken  his  governorship  that 
he  might  avoid  sharing  the  extreme  counsels  of  his  part}r. 
Hammond  at  first  wavered  between  his  military  duty  and 
his  loyalty  to  the  king.  His  "  trials  "  and  "  temptations  " 


xxi  CHARLES   I  565 

in  this  wise  drew  anxious  and  unctuous  letters  from  Crom- 
well, but  he  at  last  preferred  his  military  duty,  and  held 
Charles  as  a  prisoner  for  the  parliament. 

In  parliament,  notwithstanding  military  coercion  and 
the  expulsion  of  the  eleven  members,  moderatism,  if  not 
Presbyterianism,  was  still  in  the  ascendant.  Overtures 
were  again  made  to  the  king  in  the  shape  of  a  compro- 
mise embodied  in  four  Bills,  including  resignation  of  1647 
the  militia.  Charles  dallied  and  at  last  declined. 
His  refusal  gave  the  ascendancy  to  the  thorough-going 
party,  which  carried  a  vote  of  No  Addresses.  He  was 
looking  for  something  better  than  a  compromise  with 
parliament.  He  had  entered  into  communication  with 
a  party  in  Scotland,  headed  by  the  Duke  of  Hamilton, 
which  was  more  royalist  than  Presbyterian,  and  pro- 
posed to  invade  England  in  his  cause.  In  concert  with 
the  Scotch  invasion  there  was  to  be  a  rising  of  the  royal- 
ists in  England.  An  instrument  embodying  this  plan 
with  the  terms  on  which  Scotch  assistance  was  to  be  given 
was  signed  by  Charles  and  the  Scotch  commissioners,  wrapt 
in  lead,  and  buried  in  the  garden  at  Carisbrooke. 

To  the  Independents  and  the  parliament  of  England 
the  danger  was  now  extreme.  A  royalist  reaction  had 
set  in.  Fear  and  hatred  of  military  rule  prevailed.  Par- 
liament, trampled  on  by  the  army,  had  lost  national 
respect.  The  people  were  galled  by  the  assessments  for 
the  payment  of  the  soldiery.  They  were  exasperated, 
and  in  several  places  they  revolted,  not  without  bloodshed, 
against  the  austere  Puritan  rule  which  denied  them  their 
Christmas  feast,  their  Sunday  sports,  their  Maj'-poles, 
their  bear-baitings,  and  their  plays.  Bad  harvests  had 
increased  the  discontent  and  the  disaffection.  The  pens 


566  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

of  royalist  pamphleteers  had  been  active,  and  had  not 
spared  Cromwell's  character  or  his  red  nose.  Hamilton, 
with  an  army,  large,  though  ill-organized  and  ill-com- 
manded,  crossed  the  border.  The  flames  of  loyalist  in- 
surrection burst  out  at  several  points,  most  fiercely  in 
Kent,  Essex,  and  Wales.  Part  of  the  fleet  at  the  same 
time  revolted  and  gave  itself  up  to  Rupert.  But  the 
English  rising  had  no  head.  Charles  had  in  vain  at- 
tempted to  escape  from  Carisbrooke.  In  London  the 
insurrection  flashed  in  the  pan,  and  that  all-important 
centre  was  secured  for  the  parliament.  Operating  from 
it,  a  veteran  army  under  good  commanders  prevailed  over 
the  numerically  superior,  but  disjointed,  forces  of  its 
encircling  foes.  Cromwell,  after  stamping  out  the  insur- 
rection in  Wales,  rushed  on  Hamilton,  who  was  marching 

1648  southwards,  out-gene  railed  him,  and  at  Preston  in  Lan- 
cashire cut  his  army  to  pieces.  Fairfax  quelled  the  ris- 
ing in  the  southern  counties  and  drove  the  remnant  of 

1648  it  into  Colchester,  which,  after  a  long  siege  and  a  brave 
defence,  fell.  After  this  second  civil  war  the  victors 
were  in  a  sterner  mood.  Of  the  gallant  defenders  of 
Colchester,  Lucas  and  Lisle  were  shot  after  surrender. 
Capel  and  Goring  were  reserved  for  the  judgment  of 
parliament,  and  for  the  time  let  off  with  banishment, 
but  when  regicides  had  mounted  to  power  were,  with 
Hamilton,  condemned  to  death,  though  Goring  escaped 
the  block.  This,  at  all  events  in  comparison  with  Jaco- 
bin bloodthirstiness,  was  mercy.  The  humanity  of  the 
English  compared  with  the  French  Revolution,  though 
largely  traceable  to  political  and  social  antecedents, 
showed  a  difference  between  the  characters  of  the  two 
nations  in  respect  of  self-control. 


xxi  CHARLES   I  567 

Charles  had  now  made  it  plain  that  to  parley  with  him 
was  idle,  and  that  to  trust  him  would  be  suicide.  Parlia- 
ment, nevertheless,  made  one  more  desperate  effort  to 
treat  with  him,  and  sent  commissioners  for  the  purpose  to  1648 
Newport.  It  was  thereupon  purged  by  the  Independents. 
Colonel  Pride,  with  his  soldiery,  posted  himself  at  the  1648 
door  of  the  House  and  turned  back  moderatist  members 
to  the  number  of  one  hundred  and  forty-three,  some  of 
whom  were  put  under  arrest.  The  army  and  its  chiefs 
were  now,  without  disguise,  the  supreme  power.  We 
have  once  more  to  remind  ourselves  that  this  was  not  a 
common  army,  but  a  political  party  in  arms. 

Before  Charles's  flight  to  Carisbrooke,  the  more  violent 
of  the  republicans  and  the  sectaries  had  begun  to  talk  of 
bringing  him  to  justice.  But  when  he,  under  the  mask  of 
amicable  negotiation,  laid  and  fired  the  train  for  a  second 
civil  war,  brought  Scotch  invasion  on  England,  and  com- 
pelled the  army  once  more  to  fight  against  heavy  odds  for 
its  life  and  for  all  it  had  won,  the  cry  for  justice  on  the 
great  Delinquent  grew  louder  and  prevailed.  Before  the 
army  took  the  field  a  prayer-meeting  had  been  held  at 
Windsor,  at  which  those  present  resolved,  after  seriously 
seeking  the  Lord,  that  it  was  their  duty,  if  ever  the  Lord 
brought  them  back  in  peace,  to  call  Charles  Stuart,  that 
man  of  blood,  to  an  account  for  the  blood  he  had  shed  and 
mischief  he  had  done  to  his  utmost  against  the  Lord's 
cause  and  people  in  these  poor  nations.  At  the  close  of 
the  war  the  army,  by  the  mouth  of  Ireton,  had  demanded 
that  the  capital  and  grand  author  of  their  troubles,  the 
person  of  the  king,  might  be  speedily  brought  to  justice 
for  the  treason,  blood,  and  mischief  of  which  he  had  been 
guilty  in  bringing  about  by  his  commissions,  commands, 


568  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

procurements,  and,  in  his  own  sole  interest,  all  the  wars 
and  troubles  and  miseries  that  attended  them.  The  cup 
had  been  filled  up  by  the  blood  of  the  army  favourite, 
Rainsborough,  who  was  murdered  by  royalists  at  Don- 
caster.  Cromwell  seems  now  to  have  seen  the  finger  of 
God,  to  have  made  up  his  mind  with  his  usual  decision 
and  with  his  usual  force  to  have  bent  those  around  him  to 
his  will.  The  king  was  taken  from  Carisbrooke  to  Hurst 

1648  Castle  and  thence  brought  to  London  by  Harrison.      He 
expressed  a  fear  of  assassination,  but  Harrison  assured  him 
that  whatever  was  done  would  be  done  in  the  way  of  open 
justice. 

In  the  way  of  open  justice,  at  any  rate,  everything 
was  done,  and  with  a  Puritan  solemnity  strikingly  con- 
trasted with  the  Parisian  levity  which  characterized 
the  trial  of  Louis  XVI.  The  trial  and  execution  of 

1649  Charles  I.  were  the  work  of  a  small  party  of  men  deem- 
ing themselves  the  instruments  of  God  and  acting  with 
iron  resolution  in  the  face  of  a  horror-stricken  and  para- 
lyzed nation.      The  members  of  the  high  court  of  justice 
had  a  precedent  in  the  execution  of  Mary  queen  of  Scots, 
besides  Hebrew  examples  of  the  punishment  of  idolatrous 
kings,  which  were  probably  more  present  to  their  minds. 
But  the  awfulness  of  the  act  is  marked  by  the  abstention 
of  half  the  men  named  as  judges,  by  the  long  struggles 
which  evidently  took  place  in  the  Painted  Chamber,  to 
which  the  judges  retired,  before  sentence   could  be  pro- 
nounced, and  by  the  difficulty  found  in  collecting,  out  of 
a  body  of  one  hundred  and  thirty-five  named  as  judges, 
fifty-eight   signatures  to   the   death-warrant.      It   seems 
that   an  alteration  having  become  necessary  in  the  date 
of  the  warrant  when  some  had  already  signed,   erasure 


xxi  CHARLES   I  669 

and  interlineation  were  preferred  to  re-engrossment,  lest 
those  who  had  signed  once  should  refuse  to  sign  again. 
Fairfax  attended  only  a  preliminary  meeting  and  refused 
to  take  part  in  the  trial.  His  royalist  wife,  who  was 
present,  nearly  drew  the  fire  of  the  soldiers  upon  the 
gallery  by  her  scornful  ejaculations. 

That  part  of  the  prolix  indictment  which  charged 
Charles  with  the  bloodshed  of  the  first  civil  war  was 
groundless.  Supposing  that  in  the  struggle  for  supreme 
power  he  had  struck  the  first  blow,  the  war  had  been  a 
regular  war,  and  when,  after  its  close,  parliament  treated 
with  him  for  a  settlement,  an  act  of  amnesty  was  virtually 
passed.  Treason  against  himself  the  king  could  not  com- 
mit, and  the  resolution  passed  just  before  the  trial,  that  by 
the  fundamental  laws  of  the  kingdom  it  was  treason  in  the 
king  of  England  for  the  time  being  to  levy  war  against 
the  parliament  and  the  kingdom  of  England,  besides  being 
revolutionary,  could  have  no  retroactive  effect.  Even 
from  a  moral  point  of  view,  the  only  acts  of  Charles  in 
the  first  civil  war  which  could  be  deemed  treason  against 
the  nation  were  his  invitation  to  foreigners  and  Irish 
rebels  to  invade  the  kingdom.  Against  these  might  be 
set  the  introduction  of  a  Scotch  army  by  the  parliament. 
But  treasons  on  both  sides  had  been  cancelled  by  the 
subsequent  treatings.  The  act  for  which,  whatever  might 
be  its  legal  aspect,  Charles  morally  deserved  to  suffer  was 
the  conspiracy  by  which  he  brought  on  the  second  civil 
war  while  he  was  carrying  on  friendly  negotiations  with 
the  parliament.  For  this  apparently,  unless  royalty  was 
impeccable,  he  merited,  and  unless  his  person  was  invio- 
lable, he  might  expect  to  share,  the  doom  of  his  instru- 
ments, Hamilton,  Capel,  Lucas,  and  Lisle. 


570  THE   UNITED    KINGDOM  CHAP. 

Tradition  says  that  the  night  after  Charles's  execution 
Lord  Southampton  with  a  friend  got  leave  to  sit  up  with 
the  body  in  the  banqueting  house  at  Whitehall ;  that  at 
two  in  the  morning  they  heard  the  tread  of  someone  com- 
ing slowly  upstairs ;  that  a  man  entered,  muffled  up,  and 
with  his  face  hidden  in  a  cloak,  approached  the  body, 
looked  at  it  for  some  time,  shook  his  head,  sighed  "  cruel 
necessity;  "  then  departed  as  he  had  come  ;  and  that  Lord 
Southampton  used  to  say  that,  though  he  could  not  see 
the  man's  face,  he  took  him,  from  his  voice  and  gait,  to 
be  Cromwell.  Necessity  was  probably  Cromwell's  sole 
motive  for  an  act  which  he  might  think  justified  by 
Charles's  conduct  in  regard  to  the  second  civil  war,  but 
which,  without  necessity,  it  is  most  unlikely  that  he  would 
ever  have  done.  To  make  terms  with  Charles  had  been 
found  to  be  impossible;  there  appeared  to  be  no  one  to 
replace  him  on  the  throne;  and  in  banishment  he  would 
never  have  ceased  to  conspire.  The  wrath  of  the  army, 
too,  had  probably  got  beyond  control.  Thus  there  might 
be  apparently,  a  melancholy  necessity,  in  which,  as  usual, 
Cromwell  saw  the  finger  of  God. 

Nothing,  however,  can  be  less  true  than  that  the  action 
of  the  English  regicides  "  struck  a  damp  like  death  through 
the  heart  of  flunkeyism,  of  which  flunkeyism  has  gone 
about  incurably  sick  ever  since."  Flunkeyism  gained  at 
least  as  much  as  it  lost.  The  king,  who  had  trampled  on 
law  and  right,  was  made  to  appear  the  assertor  of  law  and 
public  right  against  an  illegal  tribunal.  The  touching 
piety  and  dignity  with  which  he  bore  himself  upon  the 
scaffold  effaced  the  memory  of  his  misdeeds.  Instead  of 
a  dethroned  tyrant  he  became  a  saint  and  a  martyr. 
io49  The  groan  which,  when  his  head  fell,  arose,  after  a  moment 


xxi  CHARLES  I  571 

of  shuddering  silence,  from  the  crowd  was  the  expression 
of  a  general  feeling  and  prophetic  of  a  restoration. 

To  the  children  of  Charles,  who  were  in  its  hands,  the 
Commonwealth  was  very  kind  ;  unlike  the  French  Repub- 
lic, which  butchered  the  wife  and  sister  of  Louis  XVI.  and 
killed  the  child  his  son  by  maltreatment.  The  queen  had 
been  impeached,  not  unjustifiably,  since  she  attempted  to 
bring  foreign  troops,  and  such  a  band  of  foreign  banditti 
as  the  Lorrainers,  into  the  kingdom.  But  it  was  not 
likely  that  more  than  a  threat  was  intended. 


CHAPTER   XXII 

THE  COMMONWEALTH 

CHARLES  I.  EXECUTED  1649;  CROMWELL  PROCLAIMED  LORD  PROTECTOR 

1653 

YX7TTH  the  head  of  the  monarch  fell,  for  the  time,  the 

monarchy,  and  with  the  monarchy  fell  the  House 

of  Lords,  the  lives  of  the  two  being  bound  up  with  each 

1649  other.  Both  had  been  solemnly  voted  out  of  existence 
by  a  resolution  of  the  Commons,  declaring  that  the  people 
are,  under  God,  the  original  of  all  just  power,  and  that 
the  Commons  of  England  in  parliament  assembled,  being 
chosen  by  and  representing  the  people,  have  the  supreme 

1649  power  in  this  nation.  A  new  great  seal  was  made,  bear- 
ing, instead  of  the  effigy  of  the  king,  on  one  side  a  map 
of  England  and  Ireland,  with  the  arms  of  the  two  coun- 
tries; on  the  other  a  representation  of  the  House  of 
Commons  with  the  inscription,  "In  the  First  Year  of 
Freedom,  By  God's  Blessing  Restored,  1648."  The 
oath  of  allegiance  became  an  oath  to  be  true  and  faith- 
ful to  the  Commonwealth  of  England.  The  statue  of 
Charles  was  thrown  down  and  on  the  pedestal  was 
•  engraved  the  inscription,  Exit  Tyrannus  Regum  Ultimus. 
The  English  revolutionists,  however,  did  not  tear  dead 
Plantagenets  and  Tudors  out  of  their  graves.  To  signalize 
the  abolition  of  the  House  of  Lords,  three  of  its  members 
had  themselves  elected  to  the  House  of  Commons.  Rank 

572 


CHAP,  xxn  THE   COMMONWEALTH  573 

and  majesty  changed  their  seat.  At  a  city  dinner  a  peer 
ostentatiously  gave  place  to  an  officer  of  the  Common- 
wealth. On  the  question  of  abolishing  the  House  of 
Lords  or  retaining  it  as  a  merely  consultative  body,  there 
had  been,  even  in  a  House  of  Commons  purged  of  its  anti- 
revolutionary  elements,  a  division  of  forty-four  to  twenty-  1649 
nine.  So  strong  was  still  tradition. 

Such  judges  as  would  consent,  being  half  of  the  bench, 
were  reappointed,  and  justice  held  its  usual  course. 
County  and  borough  institutions  were  left  intact;  sav- 
ing that  the  London  council,  as  a  great  power,  was  packed 
for  the  Commonwealth.  The  titles  of  the  lords  were  not 
abolished.  Only  with  regard  to  the  monarchy  was  a  dis- 
position shown  to  obliterate  the  past. 

This  is  the  first  national  republic.  The  republics  of 
antiquity  were  not  national,  but  municipal ;  nor  were 
they  really  democratic,  since  the  mass  of  the  people  were 
slaves.  The  republics  of  medieval  Italy  were  also  muni- 
cipal, not  to  mention  that  they  still  acknowledged  the 
Emperor.  The  federation  of  the  Swiss  Cantons  was  at 
this  time  a  mere  league.  In  the  United  Netherlands, 
besides  the  incompleteness  of  .their  union  and  the  hegem- 
ony of  Holland,  the  Stadtholderate,  hereditary  in  the 
House  of  Orange,  had  been  a  monarchy  under  another 
name.  The  English  republic  was  premature,  the  mass 
of  the  people  being  still  monarchists.  It  was  a  leap  into 
the  political  future.  It  was  the  aspiration  and  work  of  a 
party,  small  compared  with  the  nation,  and  its  life,  sus- 
tained only  by  that  party,  was  short.  So  sensible  a 
republican  as  Blake  could  believe  that  the  end  of  all 
monarchy  was  at  hand ;  but  destiny  mocked  his  dream. 
Yet  abiding1  interest  attaches  to  the  Commonwealth  as 


574  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

having   pointed    the   way   for   the   exodus    of    European 
society  from  the  hereditary  system. 

The  king,  by  whose  writ  parliament  sat,  was  in  his 
grave,  and  the  House  of  Commons,  reduced  by  seces- 
sion, decimated  by  Pride's  purge,  and  coerced  by  the 
army,  had  not  the  shadow  of  right  to  call  itself  the 
representation  of  the  people.  Its  only  assured  con- 
stituency was  the  army.  The  somewhat  doctrinaire 
Ireton,  in  the  new  Agreement  of  the  People  which  was 

1649  presented  to  parliament  by  the  army  and  which  em- 
bodied his  views,  proposed  an  immediate  dissolution  of 
the  House  and  an  election  with  an  equal  distribution 
of  seats.  Had  his  proposal  been  adopted  without  a 
narrow  party  restriction  on  the  exercise  of  the  suf- 
frage, there  would  have  been  an  overwhelming  defeat 
of  his  cause.  The  continued  existence  of  the  Long 
Parliament  was  justified  by  revolutionary  necessity.  As 
Marten  shrewdly  said,  in  the  case  of  the  Commonwealth 
as  in  that  of  Moses  the  best  foster-mother  of  the  child 
was  its  mother. 

The  need  of  a  strong  executive  was  felt,  to  undertake 
the  duties  performed  by  the  Committee  of  Safety  and 
afterwards  by  the  Committee  of  Both  Kingdoms.  A 

1649  Council  of  State  was  annually  elected  by  parliament. 
There  were  forty-one  members,  including  all  the  chiefs 
except  the  austere  theorist  Ireton.  But  the  number 
which  toqk  part  in  the  sittings  and  carried  on  the  gov- 
ernment was  far  smaller.  The  members  of  the  commit- 
tee being  also  members  of  the  House  of  Commons  and 
in  the  ascendant  there,  sufficient  unity  of  counsels  was 
secured.  A  leading  spirit  of  the  Council  of  State  was 
Sir  Henry  Vane,  who  showed  that  a  man  of  specula- 


xxn  THE   COMMONWEALTH  575 

tion,  even  if  he  is  somewhat  of  a  dreamer,  may,  when  set 
to  work,  prove  himself  a  man  of  action.  He  is  at  ail 
events  untrammelled  by  the  selfish  interests  of  the  men 
of  the  world. 

The  execution  of  the  king  and  the  transition  from  mon- 
archy to  a  republic  could  not  take  place  without  general 
disturbance.  The  fountains  of  the  political  deep  were 
broken  up.  There  ensued  a  carnival  of  wild  sects  and 
chimeras.  One  set  of  visionaries  anticipated  the  move- 
ment of  the  present  day  against  private  property  in  land, 
which  they,  like  the  heirs  of  their  fancy,  styled  a  relic  of 
Norman  conquest,  and  proceeded  to  put  their  theory  into 
practice,  though,  it  seems,  only  by  digging  up  commons 
which  had  been  enclosed.  Communism  took  little  hold. 
More  hold  was  taken  by  Harrison's  idea  that  the  godly 
should  rule  the  state.  The  most  formidable  of  the  dis- 
turbers were  the  political  Levellers  in  the  army,  who  had 
imbibed  the  radical  teaching  of  Lilburne  and  regarded  all 
authority  save  that  of  the  popular  vote  direct  as  tyranny 
to  be  put  down.  Among  these  there  was  a  great  mutiny, 
which  Fairfax  and  Cromwell  quelled  with  decisive  firm-  1649 
ness,  and  at  the  same  time  with  the  utmost  economy  of 
blood.  How  great  was  the  danger  was  seen  when  Lock- 
yer,  a  trooper  who  had  been  shot  for  mutiny  in  London, 
was  borne  to  his  grave  with  military  pomp,  six  trumpets 
sounding  his  knell,  an  escort  of  a  hundred  soldiers  head- 
ing his  funeral  procession,  his  horse  clad  in  mourning  led 
behind  him,  his  corpse  adorned  with  bundles  of  rosemary 
one  half  bathed  in  blood,  among  which  his  sword  was 
laid,  while  thousands  followed  in  rank  and  file  with  sea- 
green  and  black  ribbons,  the  badges  of  the  cause,  on  their 
hats  and  on  their  breasts,  women  bringing  up  the  rear, 


576  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

and  thousands  more  meeting  the  procession  in  the  church- 
yard at  Westminster. 

Royalism,  though  its  sword  was  broken,  continued  to 
fight  with  its  pen,  and  a  storm  of  pamphlets,  violent  and 
scurrilous  in  the  extreme,  assailed  the  revolutionary  gov- 
ernment. But  more  effective  than  any  pamphlet  or  any 
editorial  of  a  royalist  journal  was  "  Eikon  Basilike ;  the 

1649  Pourtraicture  of  his  Sacred  Majestic  in  His  Solitudes  and 
Sufferings,"  which  showed  what  may  be  done  by  a  skil- 
ful manipulator  of  opinion.  This  book  pretended  to  be  a 
devotional  autobiography  of  Charles,  revealing  the  pious 
and  martyr-like  beauty  of  his  character.  It  was  really 
the  work  of  Gauden,  an  Anglican  divine,  who  afterwards 
claimed  and  received  his  reward.  But  it  was  greedily 
accepted  by  the  royalists  as  genuine,  had  an  immense  cir- 
culation, and  produced  an  immense  effect.  To  shatter 

1649  the  Eikon,  the  Council  of  State  called  out  Milton,  who 
plied  his  hammer  with  all  his  might,  but  whose  appeal  to 
the  intellect  was  weak  compared  with  the  effigy  which 

1649  had  taken  hold  of  the  heart.  Milton  was  made  Latin 
secretary  to  the  Council  of  State,  which  employed  Latin 
as  the  diplomatic  language,  and  he  became  the  state  pam- 
phleteer, defending  the  revolutionary  and  regicide  repub- 
lic in  the  court  of  European  opinion,  where  he  had  a 
violent  and  grossly  personal  encounter  with  Salmasius, 
the  renowned  scholar  whose  pen  the  royalists  had  enlisted 
in  their  cause.  It  is  on  a  principle  something  like  that  of 
the  social  contract  that  he  bases  the  responsibility  of  kings 
and  maintains  the  right  of  tyrannicide  in  default  of  more 
regular  justice. 

Higher  far  and  of  more  abiding  interest  than  Milton's 
onslaught  on  the  Eikon  or  on  Salmasius  had  been  his 


xxn  THE  COMMONWEALTH  677 

earlier  treatise,  "  Areopagitica,"  or  plea  for  unlicensed  1644 
printing.  This  makes  an  era  in  the  history  of  that  lib- 
erty which  is  of  all  liberties  the  most  precious  and  the 
surest  guardian  of  the  rest.  There  had  so  far  been  no 
legal  censorship.  But  government  had  always  assumed 
the  right  of  controlling  the  utterance  of  opinion.  The 
famous  passages  of  Milton's  treatise  have  implanted  them- 
selves in  the  British  mind,  and  are  lasting  safeguards  of  the 
principle  they  enshrine.  But  to  allow  perfect  freedom 
of  publication  was  impossible  for  a  government  beset  with 
enemies  and  struggling  to  maintain  itself  against  insur- 
rection and  mutiny;  in  a  besieged  city  opinion  must  for  a 
time  be  under  restraint.  The  secretary  of  the  Council 
of  State  had  to  comply  with  measures  of  repression  from 
which  the  author  of  the  "Areopagitica"  would  shrink. 
Yet  a  council  of  which  Vane  was  a  leading  member  could 
hardly  be  inclined  to  interfere  beyond  the  exigencies  of 
'the  time  with  the  freedom  of  the  press.  The  press  law 
of  the  Commonwealth  was  not  a  settled  policy,  but  a  sort  1649 
of  martial  law  applied  to  the  press,  and  it  was  not  so 
enforced  as  to  prevent  the  continuance  of  royalist  journal- 
ism and  pamphleteering,  which  the  government  combated 
through  an  organ  of  its  own. 

The  government  was  less  well  advised  in  trying  to 
coerce  opinion  by  a  test,  called  the  Engagement,  binding 
first  all  officials,  afterwards  the  whole  population,  to  be. 
faithful  to  the  Commonwealth.  This  test,  like  all  tests, 
could  only  act  as  a  sieve,  sifting  honesty  from  dishonesty 
and  throwing  honesty  aside. 

It  does  not  seem  that  the  Council  interfered  beyond  the 
measure  of  necessity  with  the  regular  course  of  justice. 
For  cases  of  treason  in  which  it  could  not  have  relied  on 
VOL.  i  —  37 


578  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  (HAP. 

royalist  jurymen,  who  would  have  deemed  the  treason 
1649  virtue,  it  set  up  a  high  court  of  justice  ;  but  the  court 
was  thoroughly  respectable,  was  guided  by  lawyers,  was 
regular  in  its  procedure,  and  kept  the  rules  of  evidence. 
It  in  no  way  resembled  the  revolutionary  tribunal  of  the 
Jacobins.  John"  Lilburne  was  an  honest,  restless,  and 
turbulent  fanatic,  a  forcible  writer  and  speaker,  who 
being  utterly  unable  to  understand  the  times,  persisted 
in  attempts  to  upset  the  government  by  unanswerable 
and  unreasonable  appeals  to  the  Great  Charter  and  the 
Petition  of  Right.  Him  the  government  allowed  to  be 
1649  tried  by  a  jury,  by  which  he  was  acquitted  amidst  a  whirl- 
wind of  popular  applause,  such  as  showed  the  Council 
in  what  peril  it  stood,  and  forced  it  to  get  rid  of  the 
1652  formidable  agitator  by  temporary  banishment.  That  for 
a  government  subsisting  by  the  sword  it  was  sparing  of 
blood,  its  severest  censors  allow.  This  was  the  more  to 
its  credit,  as  the  defeated  cavaliers  at  once  began  to  show 
their  chivalry  by  assassination.  Two  envoys  of  the  Com- 

1649  monwealth,  Dorislaus  in  Holland  and  Ascham  in  Spain, 

1650  were  murdered,  and  the  murders  were  applauded  by  the 
party. 

The  vigour  of  the  Council,  especially,  it  seems,  of  Vane, 
was  shown  in  the  organization  of  a  powerful  fleet,  which 
was  required  for  defence  against  Rupert,  who,  with  re- 
volted ships  of  the  English  navy,  was  piratically  sweep- 
ing the  seas,  and  was  abetted  and  harboured  by  the 
1650  government  of  Portugal.  This  fleet  was  regular  and 
national,  not  impressed,  and  has  been,  not  without  reason, 
regarded  as  the  foundation  of  the  regular  British  navy. 
The  best  of  all  foundations  in  fact  was  laid  when  justice 
was  for  the  first  time  done  to  the  claims  of  the  common 


»xn  THE   COMMONWEALTH  579 

sailor,  who  felt  in  better  treatment  and  higher  rewards 
the  change  to  a  democratic  government.  Democracy  finds 
it  necessary  to  purchase  by  liberality  that  which  monarchy 
can  command. 

The  scene  shifts  to  Ireland,  a  name  full  of  sorrow,  1641 
of  misery,  almost  of  despair.  While  a  civil  war  of  men 
was  raging  in  England,  in  Ireland  there  had  raged  a  civil 
war  of  fiends.  It  had  been  commenced  by  the  natives 
with  massacre,  for  which  the  colonists,  when  they  could, 
took  fearful  vengeance,  and  it  had  been  carried  on  in  the 
spirit  in  which  it  had  begun.  The  Irish  population  of 
Island  Magee  was  massacred,  man,  woman,  and  child,  by 
the  Scotch  garrison  of  Carrickfergus,  and  among  the  ser-  1641 
vices  credited  to  Cole's  regiment  we  find  that  of  having 
"starved  and  famished,  of  the  vulgar  sort,  whose  goods 
were  seized  on  by  this  regiment,  seven  thousand."  When 
the  Irish  landed  in  England  or  Scotland  as  auxiliaries  of 
the  king  or  Montrose,  they  committed  similar  atrocities 
and  they  were  regularly  refused  quarter.  To  fill  the  cup 
of  mutual  hatred,  intense  antipathy  of  religion  was  added 
to  the  intense  antipathy  of  race  and  the  mortal  struggle 
for  the  land.  In  the  war  between  the  American  frontiers- 
man and  the  Red  Indian,  or  in  that  between  the  Anglo- 
Indian  and  the  Sepoy  mutineer,  more,  perhaps,  in  the 
latter  than  in  the  former,  we  have  something  like  a 
counterpart  of  the  war  between  the  races  and  religions 
in  Ireland.  There  had  been  three  parties  in  the  island ; 
that  of  the  Celtic  and  Catholic  Irish ;  that  of  the  king, 
who  was  ably  and  honourably  represented  by  the  Deputy, 
Ormonde  ;  and  that  of  the  parliament.  The  party  of 
the  parliament  split,  in  Ireland  as  in  England,  into  a 
section  of  Presbyterians,  there  formed  by  the  Scotch  in 


580  THE  UNITED  KINGDOM  CHAP! 

Ulster,  and  a  section  of  Independents.  By  the  catholic 
Celts  a  provisional  government  was  formed  for  the  con- 

1642  duct  of  the  struggle,  under  the  title  of  the  Council  of 
Kilkenny.  The  predominant  influence  in  the  Council 
was  ecclesiastical,  the  managers  were  priests,  and  to  take 
supreme  control  as  well  as  to  carry  the  assurance  of  the 
pope's  sanction  and  sympathy,  a  Nuncio,  Rinuccini,  was 
sent  from  Rome.  This  congress  was  more  like  an  em- 
bodiment of  Celtic  and  catholic  nationality  than  anything 
which  had  appeared  before.  But  it  was  divided  into  two 
parties,  whose  main  object  was  not  the  same.  The  main 
object  of  the  priests  and  of  the  nuncio  was  the  restoration 
of  the  catholic  religion  ;  the  main  object  of  the  catholic 
lords  and  of  the  agrarian  peasantry  was  the  recovery  of 
the  land.  The  divergence  perplexed  their  policy,  espe- 
cially when  they  were  dealing  with  the  king,  to  whom,  as 
he  looked  for  English  support,  open  alliance  with  Roman 
Catholicism  was  ruin.  No  really  powerful  leader  showed 
himself  among  them.  Their  chiefs  quarrelled  as  Parnel- 
lites  and  Anti-Parnellites  have  quarrelled  since.  Their 
best  man  was  Owen  Roe  O'Neill,  a  soldier  trained  abroad, 
who  came  as  a  patriot  to  fight  for  the  deliverance  of 

1646  his  race.  One  signal  victory  at  least  the  Celts  won, 
but  it  had  no  permanent  result,  and  in  general  the 
stronger  race,  though  far  inferior  in  numbers,  pre- 
vailed. Charles  tampered  with  the  rebel  Irish,  and, 
Ormonde  being  too  honourable  for  underhand  or  disloyal 
dealings,  employed  for  the  purpose  Glamorgan,  the  dis- 

1641  closure  of  whose  intrigue  brought  infamy  and  disaster  on 
his  employer's  cause.  Strafford's  Irish  army  for  the  sub- 
jugation of  England  had  never  been  forgotten.  Among 
the  terms  of  settlement  tendered  Charles  by  the  parlia- 


xxn  THE  COMMONWEALTH  681 

mentarians  had  been  the  surrender  by  him  to  parliament 
of  the  conduct  of  the  war  in  Ireland. 

While  the  war  raged  in  England  neither  the  king 
nor  the  parliament  had  force  to  spare  for  the  other 
island,  and  parliament,  with  an  exhausted  treasury, 
could  pay  soldiers  for  Ireland  only  by  the  issue  of 
debentures  to  be  located  on  the  forfeited  lands  of 
the  Irish  rebels,  binding  itself  when  the  conflict  should 
have  ended,  to  a  sweeping  measure  of  confiscation. 
Thus  Ireland  weltered  in  bootless  carnage  and  havoc, 
the  fatal  gulf  between  her  races  and  religions  deepen- 
ing all  the  time,  till,  by  the  close  of  the  second  civil 
war  in  England,  Cromwell's  hands  were  set  free.  He  1649 
then  passed  with  a  veteran  army  to  Ireland.  He  put 
forth  a  stern  declaration  against  the  maltreatment  of  the 
people  by  the  soldiery,  with  an  assurance  of  protection  to 
the  peaceable  and  quiet ;  the  first  voice  of  order  and  hu- 
manity that  had  been  heard  in  Ireland  for  eight  years.  He 
then  mora'lly  ended  the  war  by  two  terrible  blows.  The  1649 
slaughter  of  the  garrisons  of  Drogheda  and  Wexford, 
when  they  had  refused  to  surrender  on  summons  and  the 
places  had  been  taken  by  storm,  was  deplored  by  Crom- 
well himself  as  a  melancholy  necessity,  and  his  memory 
owes  little  to  the  worshippers  who  have  spoken  of  it  in  a 
different  strain.  That  garrisons  refusing  to  surrender  on 
summons  might  be  put  to  the  sword  was  the  law  of  war 
in  that  day,  and  such  was  the  regular  practice  of  the 
catholic  armies  of  Spain  and  the  Empire,  which,  indeed, 
did  not  limit  the  slaughter  to  the  garrison.  Nay,  it 
seems  that  the  Duke  of  Wellington  held  that  a  garrison 
standing  a  storm  could  be  lawfully  put  to  the  sword,  and 
even  that  such  an  example  might  in  the  end  be  a  saving 


582  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

of  blood.  In  this  Irish  war  quarter  had  been  given  on 
neither  side.  The  papal  legate,  Rinuccini,  reports  with 
exultation  after  a  victory  that  the  Irish  had  taken  no 
prisoners,  that  the  vanquished  had  been  put  to  death 
without  mercy,  and  that  the  slaughter  had  gone  on  for 
two  days  after  the  battle.  Among  those  stained  with  that 
blood  and  with  the  blood  of  the  great  massacre,  were  some 
of  the  defenders  of  Drogheda  and  Wexford ;  so  at  least 
Cromwell  believed.  Of  the  garrisons  part  only  were 
native  Irish.  At  Drogheda,  Cromwell  led  the  assault  in 
person,  and  his  passions  were  no  doubt  fiercely  fired. 
As  a  rule  he  was  not  cruel  in  war.  It  seems  difficult  to 
deny  that  the  number  of  surrenders  which  followed  and 
the  speedy  collapse  of  the  war  were  due  to  the  effect 
produced  by  Cromwell's  blows  on  the  mind  of  people  sus- 
ceptible of  such  impressions,  or  that  blood  was  thus  saved 
in  the  end.  Had  the  garrison  surrendered  on  summons, 
their  lives  would  have  been  spared.  Horrible  and  heart- 
rending these  massacres  were ;  so  were  the  massacres  of 
Sepoys  after  the  Indian  mutiny. 

Peace  having  been  made,  Cromwell  in  a  manifesto 
characteristically  clumsy,  incoherent,  and  earnest,  rea- 
soned with  the  Irish  and  declared  his  policy  both  civil 
and  religious,  showing  that  it  was  not,  as  their  priests 
had  been  leading  them  to  believe,  one  of  extermination. 
He  declared  that  he  would  not  take  or  suffer  to  be  taken 
the  life  of  any  man  not  in  arms  otherwise  than  by  due 
course  of  the  law,  and  that  although  he  could  not  toler- 
ate the  Mass,  he  would  not  interfere  with  conscience, 
but  would  endeavour  to  walk  patiently  and  in  love 
towards  the  Roman  Catholics  to  see  if  at  any  time  it 
should  please  God  to  give  them  another  or  a  better  mind. 


xxn  THE   COMMONWEALTH  583 

He  challenged  them  to  show  that  since  his  coming  into 
Ireland  a  single  man  not  taken  in  arms  had  been  slain 
or  punished  without  an  endeavour  on  his  part  to  do 
justice.  The  manifesto  was  at  least  addressed  to  the 
hearts  and  understandings  of  the  people,  not  to  their 
fears.  Of  a  part  of  the  vagabond  savagery  with  which 
the  country  swarmed  after  the  war,  Cromwell  got  rid 
by  encouraging  enlistment  in  continental  armies,  which 
presently  gave  birth  to  the  famous  Irish  Brigade. 

It  now  remained  to  satisfy  the  claims  of  the  holders 
of  debentures,  Adventurers,  as  they  were  called,  and  of 
the  soldiers  who  had  received  debentures  as  their  pay. 
To  do  this  the  catholic  land-owners  in  three  out  of  four 
provinces  of  Ireland  were  deprived  of  their  lands,  receiv- 
ing nominal  indemnities  in  Connaught,  to  which  province  1653 
catholic  land-ownership,  with  its  social  and  religious 
influences,  was  to  be  confined.  The  common  people, 
mechanics  and  labourers  necessary  to  the  cultivation  of 
the  soil,  were  not  included  in  the  sentence  of  de- 
portation ;  they  were  left  in  their  homes  under  new 
masters,  better  masters  probably  so  far  as  training  in 
industry  was  concerned,  though  aliens  in  race  and  in  re- 
ligion. Still  the  measure  was  ruthless,  and  one  at  which 
we  shudder  and  from  which  humanity  would  recoil  at 
the  present  day.  This  was  in  1653.  In  1685  Louis 
XIV.  expelled  the  Huguenots  from  France.  In  1731 
the  catholic  Prince  Bishop  of  Salzburg  expelled  the 
whole  protestant  population  of  his  principality.  A  few 
years  after  the  deprivation  of  the  catholic  land-owners  of 
Ireland  the  catholic  Duke  of  Savoy  butchered  the  pro-  1655 
testant  population  of  his  valleys.  In  Ireland  it  was  e ' sq' 
a  mortal  struggle  between  two  races  for  the  land,  and 


584  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

the  Celt  had  shown  that  Celtic  victory  meant  not  only 
the  expropriation  but  the  massacre  of  the  Teuton.  The 
Teuton  was  the  later  comer,  but  after  a  denizenship  of 
nearly  five  centuries  he  could  hardly  be  called  an  intruder, 
to  say  nothing  of  the  still  earlier  Scandinavian  settlements. 
That  the  mass  of  the  Celtic  Irish  were  at  this  time  still 
barbarous  and  exposed  to  the  treatment  to  which  bar- 
barians are  held  liable  by  a  self-styled  civilization,  may 
be  an  odious  fact,  but  is  a  fact,  wherever  the  blame  may 
have  lain.  There  was  no  such  excuse  in  the  case  of  the 
Huguenots  or  in  that  of  the  people  in  the  protestant  val- 
leys of  Savoy. 

1650  From  Ireland  the  scene  shifts  again  to  Scotland. 
Returning  from  his  Irish  victories,  Cromwell  was  called 
upon  to  take  the  field  against  the  Scotch.  Of  the  Cove- 
nanting party  in  Scotland,  that  section  which  was  more 
royalist  than  Covenanting  had  invaded  England  under 
Hamilton  and  met  its  doom  in  the  fight  at  Preston,  after 
which  Cromwell,  visiting  Scotland,  had  been  well  received 
by  the  more  religious  section  and  its  head,  the  politic 
Argyle.  But  all  the  Scotch  Presbyterians  were  mon- 
archists by  profession.  They  hated  the  thing  monarchy, 
it  was  said  of  them,  but  they  must  have  the  name  of  it. 
Stronger  than  their  attachment  to  monarchy  was  their 
abhorrence  of  toleration  and  of  the  Independents  and 
other  sectaries  who  were  masters  of  the  regicidal  Com- 
monwealth and  whose  ascendancy  extinguished  the  hope, 
kindled  in  Scotch  hearts,  of  bringing  England  under  the 
Kirk.  The  influence  of  the  storm  gathering  in  the  north 
on  the  mind  of  the  English  parliament  had  been  shown  of 
late  by  moral  and  religious  legislation,  calculated  to  con- 
ciliate the  English  Presbyterians,  from  the  religious  part 


xxn  THE   COMMONWEALTH  585 

of  which  the  tolerant  spirit  of  the  Independents  would 
have  recoiled,  though  the  pretensions  to  Messiahship  and 
the  Aiitinomianism  to  which  the  wild  times  were  giving 
birth  must  have  put  a  severe  strain  on  toleration. 

The  Scotch  at  once  recognized  Charles  II.  as  king  of  1649 
both  countries,  thereby  virtually  declaring  war  against 
the  English  Commonwealth,  on  which,  moreover,  they 
avowed  their  intention  of  forcing  their  form  of  church 
government.  They  invited  Charles  to  Scotland  pro- 
vided he  would  take  the  Covenant.  Charles  hated  the 
Covenant  and  those  who  were  tendering  it  to  him  ;  but 
he  took  the  pledge  and  prepared  to  sail  for  Scotland. 
At  the  same  time  he  secretly  authorized  Montrose,  who  1650 
promised  him  restoration  without  the  Covenant,  to 
make  another  attempt.  Montrose,  with  his  usual  dar- 
ing, made  the  attempt,  but  the  unstable  Highlander 
failed  him,  he  was  overwhelmed  by  the  troops  of  David 
Leslie  at  Carbisdale,  captured  and  carried  to  Edinburgh,  1650 
where  he  suffered  at  the  hands  of  the  vengeful  Kirk  the 
usual  fate  of  the  enemies  of  the  Lord.  The  key  to  Mont- 
rose's  course  as  a  politician  it  is  difficult  to  find.  Prob- 
ably there  was  no  key  but  impulse.  He  constantly  averred 
that  he  was  still  faithful  to  the  original  Covenant.  But 
he  could  hardly  have  pretended  that  his  attitude  towards 
it  had  not  changed  since  the  day  when  he  signed  it  and  in 
its  cause  attacked  and  took  prisoner  the  catholic  and 
royalist  Earl  of  Huntly.  Soaring  ambition,  the  restless 
spirit  of  the  old  Scotch  nobility,  hatred  of  his  rival  Argyle 
and  Argyle's  Presbyterian  following,  with  an  attachment 
to  the  crown  which  by  righting  and  conquering  in  the 
royal  cause  was  raised  to  the  pitch  of  a  passionate  and 
religious  loyalty,  will  probably  go  far  to  account  for  his 


586  THE   UNITED  KINGDOM  CHAP. 

career.  What  is  certain  is  that  he  was  a  most  romantic 
figure,  showed  miraculous  generalship  on  a  small  scale, 
and,  in  the  scarlet  mantle  trimmed  with  gold  lace  which 
he  wore  to  his  execution,  died  as  he  had  lived,  a  most 
brilliant  and  gallant  gentleman. 

1650  Montrose's  attempt  having  failed,  Charles  unblushingly 
disclaimed  it ;  and  it  is  hard  to  say  who  lied  most,  he  or 
the  Covenanters  who  pretended  to  believe  his  disclaimer. 
He  came  to  Scotland,  bowed  his  neck  to  the  abhorred 
Presbyterian  yoke,  took  the  Covenant  with  his  tongue  in 
his  cheek,  and  enacted  with  his  Covenanting  supporters 
one  of  the  most  farcical  scenes  in  history.  At  his  side 
was  his  congenial  friend  the  Duke  of  Buckingham,  at 
whose  scandalous  dissoluteness  leaders  of  the  Kirk  con- 
nived because  he  cynically  advised  Charles  to  put  him- 
self wholly  in  their  hands.  Charles  was  even  called  upon 
publicly  to  deplore  the  sins  of  his  prelatical  father  and 
the  idolatry  of  his  catholic  mother.  "The  king,"  says 
Burnet,  "  wrought  himself  into  as  grave  a  deportment  as 
he  could ;  he  heard  many  prayers  and  sermons,  some  of 
a  great  length.  I  remember  in  one  fast  day  there  were 
six  sermons  preached  without  intermission.  I  was  there 
myself,  and  not  a  little  weary  of  so  tedious  a  service. 
The  king  was  not  allowed  so  much  as  to  walk  abroad 
on  Sundays ;  and  if  at  any  time  there  had  been  any 
gaiety  at  court,  such  as  dancing  or  playing  at  cards,  he 
was  severely  reproved  for  it.  This  was  managed  with  so 
much  rigour  and  so  little  discretion  that  it  contributed 
not  a  little  to  beget  in  him  an  aversion  to  all  sort  of 
strictness  in  religion."  It  was  likely  to  make  him  an 
atheist  or  a  Roman  Catholic  ;  in  fact,  it  made  him  both. 
Once,  later  on,  Charles's  patience  broke  down  and  he 


xxn  THE   COMMONWEALTH  587 

bolted.  The  incident  was  called  The  Start.  It  is 
needless  to  say  that,  bad  as  the  boy's  conduct  was,  that 
of  the  Kirk  elders  who  bribed  and  forced  his  conscience 
was  worse.  Presbyterian  Scotland,  however,  accepted 
Charles  as  king  and  armed  in  support  of  his  pretensions 
to  the  throne. 

Rather  than  have  a  Scotch  army  in  the  bowels  of 
England  stirring  up  all  the  elements  of  disaffection,  the 
Council  of  State  resolved  to  assume  the  offensive  and 
invade  Scotland.  Fairfax,  though  since  the  beginning 
of  the  king's  trial  he  had  entirely  withdrawn  from  the 
political  field,  was  still  commander-in-chief,  and  had  con- 
tinued punctually  and  loyally  to  perform  the  duties  of 
that  office.  But  the  end  of  his  revolutionary  sympathies 
had  been  reached.  His  wife  was  a  strong  Presbyterian. 
He  had  himself  leanings  that  way.  To  ask  him  to  com- 
mand an  invasion  of  Presbyterian  Scotland  was  too  much. 
In  spite  of  earnest  solicitations  in  which  Cromwell  warmly, 
and,  there  can  be  no  doubt,  sincerely,  joined,  he  persisted 
in  resigning,  and  retired  to  his  stately  mansion,  his  books 
and  coins,  at  Nun  Appleton.  His  retirement  was  fatal 
to  the  union  between  the  Independents  and  the  moder- 
ate Presbyterians  which  it  was  now  Cromwell's  object 
to  preserve.  Cromwell,  taking  the  command,  invaded  1650 
Scotland.  He  was  there  encountered  by  David  Leslie, 
his  confederate  at  Marston,  with  an  army  greatly  supe- 
rior in  numbers  but  inferior  in  quality  to  the  veterans 
of  Naseby  and  the  Irish  campaign  ;  all  the  more  inferior 
when  ministerial  fanaticism  had  purged  it  of  ungodly 
officers  and  soldiers  to  ensure  to  it  the  favour  of  the 
Lord.  Cromwell  was  a  tactician  rather  than  a  strate- 
gist, and  above  all  a  leader  of  cavalry.  He  failed  to 


588  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

force  the  line  of  defence  covering  Edinburgh  which 
Leslie  had  taken  up.  At  last  he  was  in  great  straits, 
and  would  have  been  in  greater  had  not  the  sea  been 
kept  open  for  him  by  the  new  naval  power  of  the  Com- 
monwealth. He  was  obliged  to  fall  back,  was  in  danger 
of  having  his  retreat  cut  off,  and  although  hope  always 
burned  in  him  as  a  pillar  of  fire,  he  evidently  felt  as  if 
his  situation  was  almost  desperate,  when  a  false  move 
of  the  Scotch,  inspired,  it  seems,  by  the  overweening 
confidence  of  the  preachers,  gave  him  an  unexpected 
opening  for  attack.  He  seized  it  with  his  usual  deci- 
1650  sion,  and  in  the  battle  of  Dunbar  utterly  shattered  the 
Scotch  army.  The  attack  was  made  at  dawn.  As  the 
sun  rose  upon  the  field  of  victory,  Cromwell's  spirit  was 
uplifted  with  religious  enthusiasm.  "  Let  God  arise,"  he 
cried,  "and  let  his  enemies  be  scattered."  At  a  halt  in 
the  chase  he  struck  up  a  psalm.  At  Dunbar  the  Puritan 
spirit  was  seen  in  its  highest  exaltation,  and  at  the  same 
time  in  its  identity  with  the  spirit  of  Joshua  rather  than 
with  the  spirit  of  Jesus.  Glad  were  the  tidings  of  Dun- 
bar  to  the  English  Independents.  They  hung  the  capt- 
ured colours  in  Westminster  Hall  ;  they  struck  medals 
bearing  Cromwell's  likeness,  in  spite  of  his  protest.  They 
showed  their  release  from  fear  of  the  Presbyterians  by 
giving  legislation  a  liberal  turn. 

The  Scotch,  Cromwell  treated  not  as  enemies,  but  as 
misguided  friends.  Such,  in  fact,  had  been  the  tenor  of 
the  manifesto  which  he  put  forth  on  entering  Scotland. 
He  expressed  his  surprise,  however,  at  finding  that  under 
the  Presbyterian  system  there  lay,  beneath  the  surface 
of  enforced  godliness,  much  that  was  not  godly.  His 
observation  seems  to  be  confirmed  by  the  criminal  records 


xxn  THE  COMMONWEALTH  589 

of  the  time,  especially  in  regard  to  sexual  offences.  His 
victory  at  once  shook  the  rigid  rule  of  the  church  and 
made  way  for  comparative  freedom  of  opinion. 

Monarchical  parties  in  Scotland  were  now  fused  by  de- 
feat, and  objections  to  association  with  Engagers,  as  the 
political  followers  of  Hamilton  were  called,  were  waived 
by  all  except  a  very  stiff  section  dubbed  Remonstrants. 
Charles  was  crowned  by  the  coalition  at  Scone,  and  to  1651 
win  his  kingdom  for  him  a  new  army  was  formed  under 
David  Leslie.  Leslie  again  showed  his  skill  as  a  tacti- 
cian on  the  defensive.  In  trying  to  manoeuvre  him  out 
of  his  lines  between  Falkirk  and  Stirling  Cromwell  got  to 
the  north  of  him.  Leslie  then  slipped  away  and,  taking 
Charles  with  him,  invaded  England,  where  it  was  hoped 
the  royalists  would  rise  in  their  young  king's  favour.  In 
Lancashire  they  did  rise  under  their  local  chief,  Lord 
Derby,  but  the  movement  was  weak  and  was  easily 
quelled.  National  antipathy  was  still  too  strong  to  wel- 
come Scotch  invasion.  Not  only  did  Leslie's  army  find 
cold  welcome,  but  the  militia  and  trained  bands  turned 
out  at  the  call  of  the  government  with  a  readiness  which 
seemed  to  betoken  general  acquiescence  in  the  new  rule. 
At  Worcester,  whither  Charles's  march  had  been  directed 
in  the  vain  hope  of  reinforcement  from  the  royalist  west- 
ern counties  and  from  Wales,  his  army  was  brought  to 
bay,  hemmed  in  by  a  superior  force  under  Cromwell,  who 
had  followed  from  the  north,  and,  after  a  brave  resist- 
ance, totally  destroyed.  Charles,  after  adventures  in  1651 
which  he  found  honour  in  lowly  places,  escaped  to  the 
continent. 

Worcester  was  Cromwell's  "  crowning  mercy,"  and  the 
topmost  step  of  the  stair  up  which  fortune  had  led  him 


590  THE  UNITED  KINGDOM  CHAI>. 

to  supreme  power.  He  was  now  not  only  the  leading 
man  but  master  of  the  situation  ;  he  was  lodged  in  the 
forsaken  palace  of  royalty,  and  received  almost  roj^al 
homage.  That  he  had  long  been  scheming  for  supreme 
power,  as  his  enemies  and  detractors  averred,  is  not 

1649  likely,  since  a  year  and  a  half  before  he  had  married 
his  eldest  surviving  son,  the  heir  of  his  fortunes,  to  the 
daughter  of  a  private  gentleman,  Mr.  Mayor,  treating 
about  the  marriage  settlement  with  an  interest  which  he 
would  scarcely  have  shown  had  he  looked  forward  to 
being  master  of  a  kingdom's  wealth.  Probably  he  told 
his  own  secret  when  he  said  that  no  one  rose  higher  than 
he  who  did  not  know  whither  he  was  going.  How  far 
he  was  led  by  patriotism,  how  far  by  ambition,  in  the 
course  which  he  now  took,  who  can  tell  ?  Who  can  see 
across  two  centuries  and  a  half  into  a  heart  so  deep  as 
that  of  Cromwell? 

1652  On  the  return  of  Cromwell  to  London,  after  Worcester, 
was  passed  an  Act  of  Oblivion,  due  no  doubt  to  his 
influence,  and  an  earnest  of  his  policy,  which  was  recon- 
ciliation and  the  reunion  of  the  nation.  The  Act  was 
niggardly,  but  in  every  division  on  the  clauses  of  the  Bill 
he  voted  on  the  side  of  mercy. 

Cromwell's  Scottish  victories  produced  a  fruit  more 
glorious  than  Dunbar,  a  fruit  which,  if  dust  could  feel, 
would  have  made  the  dust  of  the  great  Edward  re- 

1652  joice.  They  were  followed  by  an  incorporating  union  of 
Scotland  with  England.  For  this  the  road  had  been 
opened  by  conquest,  and  conquest  in  defensive  war,  which 
•gives  the  conqueror  his  full  privilege.  Yet  Cromwell 
and  the  Council  of  State  acted  like  true  statesmen,  not  in 
the  spirit  or  with  the  demeanour  of  conquerors,  but  with 


xxn  THE  COMMONWEALTH  591 

all  possible  respect  for  the  honour  and  feelings  of  the 
Scottish  nation.  A  commission  was  sent  down  to  Scot- 
land, where  it  submitted  a  tender  of  union  to  repre- 
sentatives of  the  Scottish  shires  and  boroughs.  Stiff 
Presbyterians  shrank  from  incorporation  with  a  republic 
of  Independents  ;  high  royalists  shrank  from  incorpora- 
tion with  a  republic  of  any  kind  ;  while  separate  nation- 
ality could  not  be  resigned  without  a  pang.  But 
Cromwell's  rule  had  already  abated  prejudice.  It  had 
cleansed  and  lighted  Edinburgh  and  given  her  a  better 
police.  It  had  also  sheltered  beneath  its  military  pro- 
tection the  growth  of  independent  sects  which  yearned 
for  liberty  of  conscience  and  emancipation  from  the  Pres- 
byterian yoke.  The  Scotch  lawyer  stood  aloof  ;  but  it 
was  found  that  an  English  commandant,  untrammelled 
by  party  or  family  connection,  "proceeded  more  equita- 
bly and  conscientiously  in  justice  than  our  own  Scottish 
magistrates."  Even  Malignants  appealed  from  the  rigour 
of  Kirk  authorities  to  the  equity  of  an  English  general,  and 
some  of  them  became  warm  promoters  of  the  union.  The 
Kirk,  indeed,  ceased  to  dominate.  The  General  Assembly, 
through  which  its  collective  force  had  been  brought  to 
bear  upon  the  nation,  was  dispersed  by  a  colonel,  who  re- 
fused to  recognize  the  divine  warrant,  and  it  was  reduced 
to  its  presbyteries  and  synods.  The  union,  some  say,  was 
an  unwise  measure  because  it  set  Scotch  nationality  at 
naught.  If  union  was  good  in  1707,  why  was  it  not  good 
in  1652  ?  Had  not  the  Scotch  fought  at  Marston  and 
been  represented  in  the  Committee  of  the  Two  King- 
doms ?  Had  not  the  union  of  the  kingdoms,  their  relig- 
ious union  at  least,  been  an  article  in  the  Scotch  treaty 
with  Charles  at  Newport  ?  Had  not  Scotland  proclaimed 


592  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAK 

Charles  II.  king  of  Great  Britain  and  sought  to  put  him 
on  the  British  throne  ?  Was  there  any  barrier  between 
the  Englishman  and  the  Lowland  Scotchman  more  in- 
superable than  that  between  a  Lowland  Scotchman  and 
the  Highlander,  or  even  than  those  between  parties  in 
Scotland  ?  Had  not  union  been  proposed  by  the  Scotch 
to  Elizabeth?  Had  it  not  just  been  proposed  by  Argyle ? 
What  was  to  be  done  with  Scotland  ?  Was  it  to  be  put 
back  into  the  hands  of  the  enemies  of  the  English  Com- 
monwealth ?  If  we  condemn  a  policy  we  are  bound  to  be 
prepared  with  a  better. 

Over  the  colonies,  after  a  slight  resistance  by  a  royal- 
ist party  in  Barbadoes  and  Virginia,  the  Commonwealth 
stretched  its  rule,  but  on  terms,  as  expressed  in  the  case 
of  Barbadoes,  of  colonial  self-government,  self-taxation, 
and  freedom  of  trade,  which  if  they  had  remained  in 
force  might  have  torn  the  page  of  the  American  revolu- 
tion out  of  the  book  of  fate. 

The  government  of  the  Commonwealth  had  to  assert  its 
place  among  the  governments  of  Europe.  Catholic  mon- 
archies showed  little  emotion  at  the  fall  of  the  heretic 
king,  and  were  ready  to  bid  for  his  fine  collection  of 
works  of  art.  But  they,  Spain  especially,  looked  with 
horror  on  a  regicide  republic,  even  in  an  island,  with  the 
sea  to  cut  off  the  contagion.  Luckily  for  the  Common- 
wealth, France  and  Spain  were  struggling  for  supremacy, 
and  neither  of  them  could  afford  to  make  an  enemy  of 
England.  Holland  was  itself  a  republic,  but  not  regi- 
cide ;  a  prince  of  Orange,  afterwards  its  Stadtholder,  had 
married  a  daughter  of  Charles  I.,  and  Charles  II.,  with 
his  train  of  exiles,  had  there  found  shelter.  The  Com- 
monwealth of  England  did  not  proclaim  itself  propa- 


THE  COMMONWEALTH  593 

gandist  and  threaten  other  governments  with  subversion, 
but  it  insisted  on  recognition.  This  was  withheld  at  first 
most  positively  by  the  government  of  France,  at  the  head 
of  which  was  Mazarin,  with  Henrietta  Maria  at  his  elbow. 
But  Cromwell  and  Blake,  victory  by  land  and  sea,  prac- 
tically had  their  effect.  Mazarin  tried  to  open  negotia- 
tions without  recognizing  the  Commonwealth.  The 
Council  of  State  haughtily  ordered  his  envoy  to  quit 
the  country.  At  last,  like  an  Italian  statesman,  he 
waived  prejudice  and  recognized.  The  Commonwealth 
of  England  was  formally  admitted  among  the  powers.  1652 

So  far  the  Council  of  State  did  well.  It  did  far  from 
well  in  going  to  war  with  Holland.  In  its  breast  had 
arisen  a  wild  design,  if  not  of  an  incorporating  union  of 
the  two  protestant  republics,  at  least  of  an  impracticably 
close  alliance,  and  inadmissible  demands  had  been  made 
upon  the  Dutch  for  expulsion  of  royalist  exiles  and  for  the 
proscription  of  the  House  of  Orange  as  dynastic  and  con- 
nected with  the  English  dynasty.  The  Navigation  Act,  1051 
forbidding  importation  in  any  but  English  bottoms,  was  a 
measure  passed  by  the  English  parliament  in  accordance 
with  the  protectionist  policy  of  that  day,  to  oust  the 
Dutch  from  the  carrying  trade.  With  this,  the  Dutch 
put  up,  but  they  could  not  put  up  with  the  arrogant 
assertion  of  English  supremacy  in  the  narrow  seas,  or 
with  the  seizure  of  Dutch  vessels  having,  or  suspected  of 
having,  enemies'  goods  on  board.  There  was  a  series  of 
obstinate  and  bloody  battles  with  general  victory  to 
England,  with  ruin  to  the  Dutch,  who  had  a  great  mer- 
chant and  fishing  marine  to  be  cut  up  while  the  merchant 
marine  of  England  was  small.  On  the  Dutch  side 
Tromp  was  the  hero ;  on  the  English,  Blake,  who,  a 
VOL.  i  —  38 


594  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

student  till  he  was  twenty-eight,  then  a  politician,  after- 
wards distinguished  as  a  soldier,  took  command  at  sea, 
like  the  amphibious  warriors  of  those  days,  when  he  was 
fifty,  and  became  the  naval  glory  of  England,  if  not 
the  founder  of  her  naval  tactics.  Miserably  the  two  free 
and  protestant  commonwealths,  which  ought  to  have  been 
the  fastest  allies,  spent  their  forces  and  the  blood  of  their 
seamen  in  mutual  havoc.  In  the  naval  administration, 
which  was  good,  Vane  had  the  principal  hand. 

It  was  probably  about  this  time  that  Cromwell  held  a 
conference,  reported  by  Whitelock,  with  some  leading 
soldiers  and  lawyers  about  the  settlement  of  the  constitu- 
tion. The  soldiers  were  for  a  republic,  but  the  lawyers 
were  unable  to  see  how  law  could  exist  without  the  mon- 
archy, with  which  all  their  legal  formularies  were  bound 
up.  Whitelock,  if  he  tells  the  truth,  suggested  the  res- 
toration of  the  Stuart  family.  To  the  restoration  of  the 
Stuart  family,  the  head  of  which  had  then  a  price  set 
upon  his  head,  Cromwell  would  not  listen.  He  abhorred 
Charles  as  a  profligate,  apart  from  political  grounds.  Be- 
tween monarchy  and  republic  he  seems,  outwardly  at 
least,  to  have  wavered,  with  an  inclination  to  monarchy. 
If  he  thought  of  monarchy,  he  must  have  thought  of 
the  king  ;  and  if  he  thought  of  the  king,  of  whom  can 
he  have  thought  but  himself? 

The  Long  Parliament,  now  dubbed,  by  a  name  fatal  to 
its  majesty,  the  Rump,  had  not  only  by  the  death  of  the 
king  who  had  called  it  and  the  suppression  of  one  of  its 
two  Houses  lost  its  original  and  constitutional  character, 
but  by  exclusions,  purges,  and  military  coercion  it  had 
lost  the  character  of  a  representative  assembly.  It  con- 
sisted of  little  more  than  a  hundred  members,  only  about 


THE   COMMONWEALTH  596 

half  of  whom  took  an  active  share.  It  was  nothing  but 
the  revolutionary  organ  of  a  dominant  party.  At  the 
same  time  there  could  be  no  doubt  that,  minded  as  the 
country  still  was,  a  free  election,  even  if  the  Cavaliers,  or 
Malignants  as  they  were  called,  should  be  excluded, 
would  result  in  the  overthrow  of  the  regicidal  government 
and  in  the  ruin  of  the  cause.  Milton,  at  a  later  period, 
advised  the  republican  members  frankly  to  discard  the 
name  and  the  form  of  a  parliament,  to  constitute  them- 
selves the  standing  council  of  the  nation,  with  the  proper 
machinery,  in  the  way  of  partial  renovations  at  stated 
intervals,  for  keeping  touch  with  the  people,  and  in  that 
character  openly  to  take  upon  themselves  the  government 
of  the  country.  On  the  other  hand,  after  Dunbar  and 
Worcester,  the  time  might  seem  to  Cromwell  to  have 
come  for  closing  the  civil  war,  for  broadening  the  basis  of 
government  and  making  it  once  more  national,  for  am- 
nesty, for  reconciliation,  for  putting  an  end  to  the  fines  and 
confiscations  which  were  the  sinister  budget  of  revolution- 
ary finance,  and  in  the  levying  of  which,  as  well  as  in 
the  general  confusion  of  the  financial  administration,  there 
were  opportunities  for  corruption,  of  which  the  members 
of  the  parliament  were  believed,  and  one  of  them,  at 
least,  was  proved,  to  have  taken  advantage.  Our  great 
historian  of  the  period  has  quoted  from  Mazarin's  envoy, 
Croulle,  a  testimony  to  the  virtues  of  those  who  ruled 
the  Commonwealth.  "  Not  only  are  they  powerful,"  says 
Croulle,  "  by  sea  and  land,  but  they  live  without  osten- 
tation, without  pomp,  without  emulation  of  one  another. 
They  are  economical  in  their  private  expenses  and  prodi- 
gal in  their  devotion  to  public  affairs,  for  which  each  one 
toils  as  if  for  his  private  interests.  They  handle  large 


596  THE  UNITED  KINGDOM  CHAP. 

sums  of  money  which  they  administer  honestly,  observ- 
ing a  severe  discipline.  They  reward  well  and  punish 
severely."  This  perhaps  may  be  taken  as  a  general  pict- 
ure, but  cannot  be  taken  as  wholly  true.  When  supreme 
power  and  supreme  command  of  pelf  are  in  the  hands  of 
political  and  religious  party,  hypocrisy  and  with  it  knav- 
ery are  too  sure  to  abound.  With  their  Dutch  war 
Parliament  and  its  Council  of  State  had  greatly  added  to 
financial  embarrassment,  terrible  enough  before,  and  had 
been  driven  to  fresh  confiscations.  They  had  sold  the 
royal  gallery  of  paintings  and  had  resolved  to  sell  the 
cathedrals.  Cromwell,  with  all  his  officers  in  the  army  at 
his  back,  called  for  dissolution  and  a  new  election.  But 
the  parliament  shrank  from  the  abyss  over  which  it  was 
suspended,  dallied  with  the  terrible  question,  fixed  a  dis- 
tant day  for  dissolution,  and  then  proposed  practically  to 
perpetuate  itself  by  confirming  all  its  existing  members 
in  their  seats  and  submitting  the  new  elections  to  their 
revision. 

As  parliament  would  not  depart  of  its  own  accord, 
Cromwell  resolved  to  turn  it  out.  Whether  that  resolve 
was  dictated  by  patriotism  or  ambition,  whether  it  was 
necessary  and  politic  or  not,  the  mode  of  carrying  it  into 
execution  could  hardly  have  been  worse.  Policy  and 
right  feeling  alike  required  that  the  general  of  the  parlia- 
ment should  treat  with  as  much  forbearance  and  respect 
as  the  momentous  step  which  he  was  taking  permitted, 
the  assembly  which  he  had  served  and  the  men  with 
whom  he  had  acted.  Cromwell  went  down  to  the  House, 
1653  listened  for  some  time  to  the  debate  on  dissolution,  then 
rose  to  speak,  and  after  opening  in  a  strain  of  compli- 
ment, suddenly  turned  to  invective,  denounced  the  House, 


xxn  THE  COMMONWEALTH  597 

and  proclaimed  that  its  sittings  must  end.  He  then  called 
in  soldiers,  bade  them  "  take  away  that  bauble,"  the  mace, 
forced  the  Speaker  from  the  chair,  drove  out  the  mem- 
bers, and  closed  the  doors.  At  some  of  the  members, 
Vane  and  Marten  among  them,  he  hurled  personal  in- 
sults. All  of  them  he  exposed  to  the  derision  of  the 
common  enemy,  who  chalked  upon  the  door  of  the  assem- 
bly "House  to  Let  Unfurnished."  If  Cromwell  had  not 
lost  his  head,  which  was  unlikely,  he  had  felt  misgivings, 
and  to  drown  them  had  worked  himself  into  a  passion 
which  had  carried  him  too  far.  A  dignified  protest  from 
Bradshaw  and  a  number  of  the  expelled  members  was  the 
first  fruit  of  the  ignominious  expulsion.  The  deadly  en- 
mity of  men  still  powerful  was  its  further  result.  No 
explosion  of  public  feeling,  however,  followed  the  dissolu- 
tion of  the  Long  Parliament ;  that  assembly  after  all  its 
achievements  seems  to  have  departed  amidst  general  in- 
difference, if  not  amidst  general  contempt.  For  this  its 
loss  of  a  constitutional  character  will  hardly  account. 
There  must  have  been  suspicions  of  self-seeking  and  of 
corruption,  for  which  the  fining  of  Malignants,  the  seques- 
tration of  their  estates,  and  the  sale  of  all  the  crown 
and  church  lands,  would  afford  opportunities  difficult  to 
resist. 


CHAPTER   XXIII 

THE  PROTECTORATE 

OLIVER  CROMWELL  PROCLAIMED  LORD  PROTECTOR  1653;  RICHARD  CROM- 
WELL DEPOSED  1659 

"VTOTH1NG  was  now  left  but  Cromwell,  with  the  army, 
a  political  army  it  is  always  to  be  remembered,  as  the 
basis  of  his  authority.  He  had  no  love  of  sabre  sway. 
Like  Caesar,  unlike  Napoleon,  he  had  been  a  politician 
before  he  was  a  soldier  and  he  had  always  shown  himself 
loyal  in  principle  to  the  supremacy  of  the  civil  power. 

His  aim  may  fairly  be  said  to  have  been,  after  closing 
the  wounds  of  the  civil  war  by  amnesty,  to  re-settle  the 
government  on  a  broad  national  basis,  in  accordance  with 
the  habits  and  traditions  of  the  people,  securing  to  the 
nation  at  the  same  time  the  substantial  objects,  religious 
and  political,  the  religious  objects  above  all,  for  which  the 
civil  sword  had  been  drawn.  From  the  conference  which 
he  held  at  the  critical  moment  with  leading  men,  soldiers, 
and  lawyers,  to  take  the  soundings  of  opinion  as  to  the 
settlement  of  the  constitution,  it  appears  that  his  own 
leaning  was  in  favour  of  something  monarchical,  whether 
with  the  old  or  with  a  new  name.  How  far  in  this  he  was 
listening  to  the  promptings  of  his  own  ambition  is  a 
question  which  must,  once  more,  be  left  unanswered.  His 
ambition  at  all  events  was  in  unison  with  the  habits  and 

698 


CHAP,  xxin  THE  PROTECTORATE  599 

traditions  of  the  bulk  of  the  nation,  as  at  the  Restoration 
appeared.  In  any  case  he  was  not  guilty  of  apostasy. 
He  had  drawn  his  sword  in  a  religious  cause  with 
which  the  cause  of  civil  liberty  was  identified,  and  had 
never  proclaimed  himself  a  republican,  though  he  had 
republicans  among  his  brethren  in  arms  and  had,  no  doubt, 
listened  to  them  with  sympathy  and  perhaps  flattered  their 
aspirations.  He  had  evidently  been  willing  to  restore  the 
king  if  the  king  could  have  been  effectually  bound  to 
mend  his  ways.  That  Cromwell  was  still  true  to  liberty, 
Milton,  no  bad  judge,  must  have  been  convinced  when  he 
wrote  his  sonnet.  While  he  knew  that  Cromwell  had 
suffered  detraction,  over  which,  as  over  his  enemies  in 
war,  he  hails  him  triumphant,  he  beckons  him  on  to 
victories  of  peace  and  to  the  rescue  of  free  conscience,  of 
which  he  regards  him  as  the  hope. 

Cromwell's  ambition  has  been  often  contrasted  with  the 
moderation  of  Washington.  The  two  cases  are  not 
parallel.  The  American  revolution  was  not,  like  the 
English  revolution,  in  the  full  sense  of  the  term,  a  civil 
war.  It  was  mainly  a  struggle  against  an  external  power. 
This  unites  rather  than  divides  the  struggling  com- 
munity. Cromwell  said  truly  that  in  England  there  was 
need  of  a  constable  to  restore  order.  There  was  compara- 
tively little  need  of  a  constable  in  America. 

The  true  view  of  Cromwell's  character  is  that  which 
represents  him  as  raised  from  step  to  step  by  circumstance 
without  far-reaching  ambition  or  settled  plan.  The  "  war's 
and  fortune's  son "  had  "  marched  on "  as  war  and  its 
fortune  led  him.  He  rather  dealt  decisively  with  events 
as  they  came  than  tried  either  to  control  or  forecast  their 
course.  He  even  seems,  from  his  conduct  with  regard  to 


600  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

the  execution  of  the  king  and  the  ejection  of  the  Long 
Parliament,  to  have  been  capable  of  an  impulsive 
plunge. 

It  was  a  wild  state  of  agitation,  political  and  reli- 
gious, over  which  the  baton  of  the  constable  was  waved. 
Fifth  monarchy  men,  such  as  Harrison,  were  calling  for 
the  reign  of  the  saints.  Presbyterians  were  still  struggling 
to  impose  their  intolerant  theocracy.  Fox  and  his 
Quakers  were,  in  the  name  of  their  inner  light,  invading 
steeple-houses,  railing  at  ministers,  and  preaching  naked 
in  the  streets.  Antinomians  were  teaching  that  sin  in  the 
children  of  grace  was  no  sin.  Levellers  like  Lilburne 
were  clamouring  for  a  direct  government  by  the  people, 
which  would  have  led  the  nation  through  anarchy 
back  to  the  Stuarts.  Communists  were  demanding  a 
common  ownership  of  land.  Royalists,  incensed  by  con- 
fiscation and  proscription,  formed  a  standing  conspiracy 
against  the  government.  Anti-Trinitarians  were  attack- 
ing the  Trinity,  and  Trinitarians  were  wanting  to  per- 
secute them.  Thomas  Hobbes,  looking  on,  was  inspired 
with  the  idea  of  his  "Leviathan,"  a  -brazen  despotism 
which  should  impose  peace  upon  the  savage  beasts  by 
absolute  extinction  of  liberty,  religious  as  well  as  political, 
leaving  no  freedom  anywhere  except  in  the  secret  sanc- 
tuary of  thought. 

To  transfer  the  government  from  a  party  to  a  national 
basis  on  the  morrow  of  the  civil  war  and  with  the  passions 
of  the  war  still  glowing  was  an  arduous  task.  In  under- 
taking it  Cromwell  had  against  him  his  personal  position 
as  the  chief  of  a  party,  or  of  something  narrower  than  a 
party;  for  the  republicans  would  be  opposed  to  him  and 
he  had  increased  their  estrangement  by  the  insulting  vio- 


xxiii  THE  PROTECTORATE  601 

lence  with  which  he  had  turned  out  the  Long  Parliament. 
He  had  against  him  all  the  envies  and  jealousies  which 
beset  a  new  man  raised  above  his  fellows.  He  had  against 
him  the  hatred,  strong  in  a  constitutional  nation,  of  mili- 
tary government,  to  which  for  the  time  he  was  driven,  as 
well  as  the  unpopularity  of  the  taxation  which  maintenance 
of  a  standing  army  involved.  He  had  against  him  the 
odium  of  regicide,  which  in  the  eyes  of  royalists  exposed 
him  to  assassination  as  well  as  to  rebellion,  and  in  the 
eyes  even  of  such  a  royalist  as  Clarendon  made  killing  no 
murder.  For  him,  he  had  the  desire  of  peace  and  of  a 
return  to  settled  industry,  which  was  sure  to  be  strong  in 
the  nation  at  large ;  the  negative  good  will  of  the  van- 
quished to  whom  he  held  out  amnesty ;  the  divisions 
among  his  opponents,  which  were  such  that  it  was  scarcely 
possible  for  them  to  act  in  concert.  He  had  his  own 
supreme  ability,  a  temperament  which  never  knew  despair, 
a  fortitude  sustained,  it  cannot  be  doubted,  by  strong  and 
sincere  religion,  a  knowledge  of  men  gained  by  the  widest 
experience  both  at  the  council  board  and  the  camp-fire 
side.  The  army,  though  adverse  in  sentiment  to  anything 
like  a  restoration  of  monarchy,  was  bound  to  its  chief  by 
the  spell  of .  victory,  and  so  long  as  it  obeyed  him  his 
government  could  not  be  overturned. 

From  civil  war  to  law  and  liberty  a  nation  cannot  pass 
at  a  bound.  There  must  be  an  interval  during  which  the 
new  government  will  need  to  be  upheld  partly  by  force. 
Cromwell  saw  the  limits  of  political  necessity.  "When 
matters  of  necessity  come,"  he  said,  "then  without  guilt 
extraordinary  remedies  may  be  applied,  but  if  necessity  be 
pretended  there  is  so  much  the  more  sin."  He  does  not 
seem  to  have  swerved  much  from  this  rule. 


602  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

"  But  thou,  the  War's  and  Fortune's  son, 
March  indefatigably  on; 
And  for  the  last  effect, 
Still  keep  the  sword  erect. 

"  Beside  the  force  it  has  to  fright 
The  spirits  of  the  shady  night, 
The  same  arts  that  did  gain 
A  power,  must  it  maintain." 

Had  Andrew  Marvell  qualified  the  last  words  so  as  to 
limit  them  to  the  transition,  these  lines  would  have  been 
true. 

Cromwell's  first  step,  after  turning  out  the  Parliament, 
showed  that  his  object  was  not  military  despotism.  It 
was  taken  by  him  expressly  "to  divest  the  sword  of  all 
power  in  the  civil  administration.'"  In  concert  with  a 
council  of  officers  which  he  had  formed  for  himself  he 
1653  called  a  convention  consisting  of  a  hundred  and  forty 
Puritan  nobles,  a  hundred  and  twenty-nine  of  them  cho- 
sen from  different  counties  of  England  and  Wales  on  the 
recommendation  of  the  local  Puritan  churches,  with  five 
to  represent  Scotland  and  six  to  represent  Ireland  ;  and 
put  the  state  for  re-settlement  into  its  hands.  The  quali- 
fication being  religious  and  moral,  though  politicians  and 
soldiers  who  had  little  of  the  saint  about  them  were  in- 
cluded, the  measure  may  be  regarded  as  a  very  cautious 
trial  of  the  scheme  of  government  by  the  saints. 

This  assembly  seems  to  have  been  fairly  composed  so 
far  as  the  narrow  exigencies  of  party  would  permit,  and 
entirely  respectable,  though  from  Praise-God  Barbone, 
one  of  its  leading  members,  scoffers  nicknamed  it  the 
Barebones  Parliament.  Nor  is  there  any  reason  for 
.  supposing  that  Cromwell's  object  in  calling  it  was  other 


xxin  THE   PROTECTORATE  603 

than  he  proposed.  The  design  ascribed  to  him  of  dis- 
crediting, by  an  exhibition  of  their  fanaticism  and  incom- 
petence, the  leading  men  of  a  party  which  he  meant  to 
betray,  was  too  deep  even  for  so  profound  a  plotter  as 
Cromwell  was  imagined  by  his  enemies  to  be. 

The  Little  Parliament,  as  it  is  more  respectfully  called, 
went  to  work  in  a  way  which  shows  that  it  was  no  mere 
assembly  of  wild  enthusiasts  clearing  the  way  by  the 
destruction  of  law,  learning,  and  civil  society  for  a  reign 
of  the  saints.  It  organized  itself  in  eleven  committees ; 
for.  the  reform  of  the  law  ;  for  the  reform  of  the  prisons  ; 
for  the  reform  of  the  finances  and  the  lightening  of  the 
taxes  ;  for  Ireland ;  for  Scotland ;  for  the  army ;  for 
petitions  ;  for  public  debts  ;  for  the  regulation  of  commis- 
sions of  the  peace,  and  the  reform  of  the  poor  law  ;  for  the 
advancement  of  trade  ;  for  the  advancement  of  learning. 
Among  its  proceedings  we  find  measures  for  the  care  of 
lunatics  and  idiots,  for  the  regular  performance  of  mar- 
riages, and  the  registration  of  births  and  deaths,  for 
probate  of  wills  in  all  counties,  and  for  law  reforms.  The 
law  reforms  pointed  not  only  to  a  speedier  and  cheaper 
administration  of  justice  but  to  the  preparation  of  a 
simple  and  intelligible  code  of  law.  This  is  a  programme 
of  modern  and  now  approved  legislation.  But  the  Lit- 
tle Parliament  lacked  both  authority  and  prudence  for 
the  settlement  of  the  nation.  It  appears  that  the  as- 
sembly was  pretty  equally  divided  between  two  parties, 
radical  and  conservative  ;  that  the  radical  party  had 
slightly  the  majority  and  wished  to  go  further  and  faster 
than  Cromwell  desired  or  circumstances  would  bear.  No 
one  could  be  more  bent  than  Cromwell  on  rational  re- 
form of  the  law.  But  he  did  not  dream  of  the  law  of 


604  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

Moses,  and  he  had  to  keep  terms  with  a  powerful  pro- 
fession. Although  the  court  of  chancery  cried  aloud  for 
reform,  total  abolition  was  too  much  as  a  first  step. 
That,  however,  which  probably  determined  Cromwell 
to  bring  the  sittings  of  the  Little  Parliament  to  a 
close  was  a  vote  which  showed  that  the  majority  was  in 
favour  of  abolishing  public  provision  for  the  clergy  and 
thus  putting  an  end  to  the  existence  of  a  national  church. 
Cromwell  had  convinced  himself  that  a  national  church, 
with  a  public  provision  for  its  clergy,  was  essential  to  the 
maintenance  and  propagation  of  the  Gospel,  the  objects 
always  foremost  in  his  mind,  while  he  was  ready  for 
the  largest  toleration  and  the  most  drastic  measure  of 
1653  church  reform.  The  Little  Parliament  was  dismissed 
with  decency  under  the  appearance  of  dissolving  itself. 
Cromwell  seems  to  have  become  conscious  of  the  mistake 
which  he  had  made  in  his  manner  of  turning  out  the 
Long  Parliament,  for  in  his  first  speech  to  the  Little 
Parliament  he  apologized  for  the  act.  "  I  speak  here,  in 
the  presence  of  some  that  were  at  the  closure  of  our  con- 
sultations, and,  as  before  the  Lord  —  the  thinking  of  an 
act  of  violence  was  to  us  worse  than  any  battle  that  ever 
we  were  in  or  that  could  be,  to  the  utmost  hazard  of  our 
lives  ;  so  willing  were  we,  even  very  tender  and  desirous, 
if  possible,  that  these  men  might  quit  their  places  with 
honour." 

Our  accounts  of  these  events  are  imperfect,  and  mystery 
hangs  over  the  episode  of  the  Barebones  Parliament. 
With  what  special  object  was  this  assembly  summoned  ? 
Was  it  permanently  to  take  the  place  of  the  national  leg- 
islature ?  For  this  it  was  manifestly  unfit.  Was  it  in- 
tended to  frame  a  constitution  ?  So  the  writ  summoning 


xxni  THE  PROTECTORATE  605 

it  seems  to  import,  yet  to  this  work  it  never  put  its  hand. 
It  may  have  been  an  experiment  pressed  on  Cromwell  by 
the  council  of  officers,  of  whom  Harrison  was  one,  rather 
than  the  offspring  of  his  own  policy.  At  all  events  the 
reign  of  the  saints  had  been  tried  in  the  most  guarded 
manner  and  had  failed. 

Cromwell's  council  of  soldiers  and  civilians  now  pro- 
ceeded in  the  light  of  the  political  discussions  which  had 
been  going  on,  and  of  which  Ireton's  Agreement  of  the 
People  was  the  most  notable  outcome,  to  frame  a  consti- 
tution for  the  Commonwealth  of  England,  Ireland,  and  1653 
Scotland.  Cromwell  protests  that 'he  was  not  privy  to 
the  consultations,  but  the  result  clearly  bears  the  im- 
press of  his  mind.  The  Instrument  of  Government  is  the 
first  written  constitution  for  a  nation  of  modern  times, 
the  only  written  constitution  which  England  has  ever 
had.  It  may  still  deserve  study  at  a  time  when  popular, 
party,  and  demagogic  government  appears  to  be  every- 
where on  its  trial.  In  contrast  at  once  to  Harrison's 
reign  of  the  saints,  and  to  Lilburne's  government  by  the 
people,  the  Instrument  follows  the  main  lines  of  the  old 
constitution,  substituting,  though  perhaps  provisionally, 
the  elective  for  the  hereditary  headship. 

In  place  of  the  king  the  chief  of  the  executive  is  a  Pro- 
tector, to  be  elected  for  life  by  the  council  of  state,  which 
shares  with  him  the  executive  power.  He  is  the  head  and 
representative  of  the  nation,  the  captain-general  of  its 
forces,  the  source  of  magistracy,  and  the  fountain  of 
honour.  In  his  name  all  writs  and  commissions  run. 
With  his  council,  he  has  the  power  of  peace  and  war ; 
but  in  case  of  war  parliament  is  at  once  to  be  called.  The 
Protector,  like  the  king,  nominates  the  great  officers  of 


606  THE   UNITED    KINGDOM  CHAJ-. 

state  ;  but  his  nominations  of  the  chancellor,  the  treasu- 
rer, the  chief  justices  and  the  governors  of  Scotland  and 
Ireland,  must  be  approved  by  parliament. 

In  place  of  the  privy  council  nominated  by  the  king  at 
his  pleasure  is  a  council  of  state,  in  number  not  less  than 
thirteen  or  more  than  twenty-one,  vacancies  in  which  are 
to  be  filled  by  a  mixed  process,  parliament  designating 
six  persons  of  integrity,  ability,  and  fearing  God ;  the 
council,  of  these  six,  choosing  two  ;  and  the  Protector,  of 
these  two,  choosing  one. 

The  parliament  is  a  single  elective  house.  It  has  the  en- 
tire power  of  legislation  and  taxation,  to  the  Protector  being 
reserved  only  a  suspensive  veto  on  legislation  for  twenty 
days.  It  must  be  called  once  at  least  in  every  three  years, 
as  the  Triennial  Act  had  prescribed,  and  sit  for  five 
months.  It  is  to  be  elected  on  a  reformed  footing,  the 
petty  boroughs  being  disfranchised,  the  franchise  being 
transferred  from  them  to  large  towns,  more  members 
being  given  to  the  counties,  and  the  franchise  being 
extended  from  freehold  to  all  property,  real  or  per- 
sonal, including  copyhold  and  leasehold,  of  the  value 
of  two  hundred  pounds;  a  conservative  qualification  in 
those  days.  Special  borough  franchises  seem  not  to  have 
been  abolished.  The  general  result  would  be  a  con- 
stituency largely  yeoman  and  middle-class.  Clarendon 
speaks  of  the  reform  as  one  fit  to  be  made  more  warrant- 
ably  and  in  a  better  time.  To  estimate  its  value  we  have 
only  to  consider  what  was  done  in  the  next  two  centuries 
by  the  rotten  boroughs.  The  representation  of  Scotland 
and  Ireland  was  to  be  regulated  by  the  Protector  and  the 
council.  Excluded  from  voting  were  all  Roman  Catho- 
lics, all  who  had  made  war  on  the  parliament,  unless  they 


xxin  THE   rKOTECTOKATE  607 

had  since  given  proof  of  their  good  affection,  and  all  who 
had  taken  part  in  the  Irish  rebellion.  Cromwell  would 
no  doubt  have  treated  peacable  acquiescence  as  sufficient 
proof  of  good  affection. 

The  command  of  the  forces  had  been  the  final  bone  of 
contention  between  Charles  and  the  parliament.  The 
Instrument  gives  it  to  the  Protector  with  parliament,  if 
parliament  is  sitting;  if  parliament  is  not  sitting,  to 
the  Protector  with  the  council. 

The  Christian  religion  contained  in  the  Scriptures, 
that  is  to  say,  Puritanism,  is  professed  by  the  nation. 
The  established  church  and  the  national  clergy  are  re- 
tained, but  a  provision  less  objectionable  than  tithe  is  to 
be  made  for  the  clergy.  There  is  to  be  full  liberty  out- 
side the  establishment  for  all  such  as  profess  faith  in  God 
by  Jesus  Christ,  so  long  as  they  abuse  not  this  liberty  to 
the  civil  injury  of  others  or  the  disturbance  of  the  public 
peace ;  and  all  laws  and  ordinances  contrary  to  that  lib- 
erty are  to  be  null  and  void.  The  liberty,  however,  is 
not  to  extend  to  popery  or  prelacy,  nor  to  the  preaching 
or  practice  of  licentiousness  under  the  profession  of 
Christ. 

Cutting  right  athwart  the  constitutional  principles  of 
the  Instrument  is  an  enactment  dictated  by  dire  necessity 
and  laying  bare  the  foundation  of  the  Protectorate.  Pro- 
vision is  made  irrespectively  of  the  authority  of  parlia- 
ment for  a  constant  yearly  revenue  to  maintain  an  army 
of  thirty  thousand  men. 

Three  articles  Cromwell  treated  as  fundamental ;  gov- 
ernment by  a  single  person  and  parliament,  toleration, 
and  the  settlement  of  the  army. 

Lacking  to  this  written   constitution  are  a  power  of 


608  THE   UNITED  KINGDOM  CHAP, 

interpretation  and  a  power  of  amendment.  But  the  power 
of  amendment  was  subsequently  exercised  by  parliament, 
with  the  consent  of  the  Protector. 

Oliver  Cromwell  was  to  be  the  first  Protector,  and  the 
Instrument  named  for  the  first  term  the  members  of  the 
council  of  state,  which  included  the  chiefs,  military  and 
political,  of  the  Commonwealth  party.  The  Protector 
and  council  are  empowered  to  legislate  provisionally  by 
ordinance  till  the  parliament  meets. 

This  constitution,  launched  on  stormy  waters  and  tem- 
pest-tossed from  the  outset,  was  never  fairly  tried.  But 
under  it,  had  it  taken  effect,  government  would  ap- 
parently have  been  national ;  party  at  least,  could  hardly 
have  reigned;  cabal  and  intrigue,  the  workings  of  per- 
sonal ambition,  no  constitution  can  exclude.  The  Protec- 
tor is  not  an  autocrat ;  he  must  carry  his  council  with 
him.  Public  opinion  acts  on  government  through  a  par- 
liament elected  by  the  people,  which  in  its  turn  takes  part 
in  the  election  of  the  members  of  council  who  elect  the 
Protector,  and,  when  sitting,  divides  with  the  Protector 
the  control  of  the  forces,  besides  approving  the  appoint- 
ment of  the  great  officers  of  state.  The  members  of  the 
council  of  state,  unlike  the  members  of  the  American 
administration,  may  sit  in  parliament,  as  the  whole  of 
Cromwell's  first  council  did ;  and  they  would  answer  for 
the  policy  of  the  government  there.  Thus  authority, 
stability,  and  continuity  would,  if  the  constitution  worked 
as  its  framers  desired,  be  reconciled  with  the  just  and 
settled  influence  of  national  opinion. 

1653  The  Protector  was  installed  with  moderate  state,  and 
during  the  next  five  months  freely  exercised  the  power  of 
provisional  legislation  reserved  to  him  in  the  Instrument, 


xxiii  THE   PROTECTORATE  609 

developing  in  fact  by  a  series  of  ordinances  his  policy  in 
all   departments,  civil,  religious,  diplomatic,  and   moral, 
including  the  union  of  the  Kingdoms,  or  Commonwealths   1654 
as  they  are  now  to  be  called. 

He  then  opened  his  first  parliament  with  a  speech  1654 
which  stamped  the  Protectorate  as  conservative  and  its 
policy  as  that  of  maintaining  a  national  church  and 
protecting  civilized  society  against  the  Fifth  Monarchy 
and  the  Levellers.  He  was  able  to  announce  an  honour- 
able and  advantageous  peace  with  Holland,  peace  with 
Portugal,  and  good  relations  with  Sweden  and  Denmark, 
the  protestant  powers  of  the  north.  "  Blessed  be  God," 
he  said,  "  we  see  here  this  day  a  free  parliament,  and  that 
it  may  continue  so  I  hope  is  in  the  heart  of  every  good 
man  of  England  ;  for  my  own  part,  as  I  desired  it  above 
my  life,  so  to  keep  it  free  I  shall  value  it  above  my  life." 
This,  he  afterwards  said,  was  the  hopefullest  day  his  eyes 
ever  saw.  That  the  parliament  had  been  freely  elected 
within  the  widest  limits  of  loyalty  to  the  Commonwealth 
was  at  once  shown  by  the  appearance  of  a  formidable 
opposition,  composed  partly  of  irreconcilable  republicans, 
partly  of  Presbyterians,  anti-republicans  at  heart  and 
mortal  enemies  to  Cromwell's  policy  of  toleration.  In- 
stead of  proceeding  to  business,  the  Presbyterians  and  the 
irreconcilable  republicans  combined  fell  to  overhauling 
the  Instrument  of  Government  and  questioning  the 
right  of  the  Protector.  The  answer  to  their  questionings 
was  that,  if  they  wanted  divine  right,  Heaven,  by  Crom- 
well's hands,  had  saved  them  all  ;  and  if  they  wanted 
human  right,  it  was  by  virtue  of  his  writ  that  they  were 
there.  The  writ  bore  on  the  face  of  it  an  engagement  not 
to  disturb  the  government  as  settled  in  a  single  person  and 
VOL.  i  —  30 


610  THE  UNITED  KINGDOM  CHAI-. 

1654  a  parliament.  It  became  necessary  to  put  to  each  member 
a  test  re-affirming  the  obligation  of  the  writ,  which  was 
taken  by  about  three  hundred  of  the  four  hundred  mem- 
bers in  attendance,  while  it  was  refused  by  the  rest.  The 
Presbyterians  having,  as  Cromwell  said,  since  they  had 
ceased  to  be  oppressed  by  the  bishops,  become  themselves 
the  greatest  oppressors,  ever  bent  on  persecution,  and 
alarmed  by  the  growth  of  strange  sects,  strove  to  limit  the 
toleration  secured  to  Christian  sectaries  under  the  Instru- 

1654  ment.     They  pounced  upon  Biddle,  a  Socinian,  and  would 
evidently  have  dealt  with  him  in  the  spirit  of  their  atro- 
cious enactment  under  the  Long  Parliament,  had  not  the 
Protector  snatched  him  from  their  fangs  and  sent  him  off 
to  kind  confinement  in  the  Scilly  Islands.     The  coalized 
oppositions  had  thus  assailed  two  of  the  Protector's  three 
fundamentals.     It  seems  that  they  assailed  the  third  fun- 
damental, the  settlement  and  control  of  the  army,  at  least 
by  withholding  supplies,  which  drove  the  army  to  free 
quarters  and  endangered  its  subordination.     The  Protec- 
tor expostulated  with  fervour.     At  length,  weary  of  the 
fractiousness  of  the  parliament  and  of  its  waste  of  time, 

1655  he  called  it  before   him   in   the   Painted   Chamber,  and 
after  another  long  speech  of  expostulation  pronounced  its 
dissolution.     He  could  say  with  truth  that  he  had  allowed 
it  to  deal  freely  with  everything  but  the  foundations  of 
his  government.     To  allow  these  to  be  subverted  would 
have  been  to  throw  the  nation  back  into  the  vortex  of 
confusion  from  which  it  had  just  emerged. 

There  was  now  a  recurrence  to  unparliamentary  gov- 
ernment, legislation  by  ordinance,  and  what,  without  para- 
mount necessity,  would  be  justly  branded  as  arbitrary 
rule.  It  must  be  borne  in  mind,  however,  that  Cromwell 


xxin  THE  PROTECTORATE  611 

was  not  a  despot.  He  had  always  to  carry  with  him  his 
council  of  state,  and  such  men  as  Lambert,  Fleetwood, 
Desborough,  Montague,  Lisle,  and  Skippon  were  not 
likely  to  be  ciphers.  If  his  policy  ever  wavers,  deference 
to  the  council  may,  as  has  been  suggested,  have  been  the 
cause. 

Against  the  payment  of  customs  duties  imposed  by  ordi- 
nance in  council  a  legal  protest  was  made  by  a  merchant 
named  Cony,  who,  if  the  question  had  been  decided  in 
his  favour,  would  have  broken  up  the  army,  and  with 
the  army  the  government.  He  was  silenced,  apparently 
not  in  the  most  regular  way.  Such  are  the  incidents  of 
revolutions,  and  they  are  reasons  for  avoiding  revolutions 
and  making  the  past  as  far  as  possible  slide  quietly  into 
the  future. 

It  may  well  be  that  military  command  had  made  Crom- 
well somewhat  arbitrary,  and  that  his  dizzy  elevation 
had  not  been  without  effect  even  upon  that  strong  head. 
But  if  it  was  by  force  that  he  upheld  his  tottering  govern- 
ment, it  was  in  something  other  than  force  that  he  strove 
to  give  it  root.  "  I  perceived,"  says  Baxter,  an  adverse 
and  unexceptionable  witness,  "  that  it  was  Cromwell's  de- 
sign to  do  good  in  the  main  and  to  promote  the  Gospel 
and  the  interest  of  godliness,  more  than  any  one  had  done 
before  him  ;  except  in  those  particulars  which  his  own 
interest  was  against :  and  it  was  the  principal  means  that 
henceforward  he  trusted  to  for  his  own  establishment,  even 
by  doing  good  :  that  the  people  might  love  him,  or  at 
least  be  willing  to  have  his  government  for  that  good,  who 
were  against  it,  as  it  was  usurpation."  "Some  men,"  says 
Baxter,  "thought  it  a  very  hard  question,  whether  they 
should  rather  wish  the  continuance  of  an  usurper  who 


612  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

would  do  good,  or  the  restitution  of  a  rightful  governor 
whose  followers  would  do  hurt."  We  may  be  sure  that  an 
increasing  number  chose  the  first  horn  of  the  dilemma. 
Algernon  Sidney,  no  uncritical  judge,  said  that  the  Pro- 
tector had  very  just  notions  of  liberty.  Milton,  though  he 
uttered  some  anxious  words  of  warning,  remained  steadily 
Oliverian.  The  question  is,  whether  the  man  was  tending 
and  working  towards  the  restoration  of  constitutional 
liberty  or  away  from  it.  Milton  must  have  thought  he 
was  tending  and  working  towards  it.  What  Milton 
might  have  thought  had  his  hero  put  on  the  crown  we 
cannot  tell. 

Cromwell  had  told  the  parliament  that  by  quarrelling 
with  the  government  it  was  nursing  conspiracy.  The 
truth  of  his  words  was  proved  by  a  rising  of  the  royal- 

1655  ists  in  the  north  and  west ;  in  the  west  under  Penrud- 
dock  on  a  serious  scale.  This  was  put  down  with  vigour, 
and  the  royalists  rose  no  more.  But  there  was  never  an 
end  of  plotting  against  the  Protector's  life  by  royalists, 
irreconcilable  republicans,  Fifth  Monarchy  men,  or  all 
combined.  Hume  says  Cromwell's  nerve  was  shaken, 
but  he  has  embellished  a  passage  in  the  work  of  Dr.  Bate, 
court  physician  to  Charles  II.  Cromwell  took  precau- 
tions, of  which  the  author  of  "  Killing  no  Murder  "  told 
him,  and  Gerard  and  Vowel  showed  -him,  he  had  need. 
But  there  is  no  reason  to  believe  that  the  fear  of  assassina- 
tion, unmanning  as  it  usually  is,  shook  his  nerve  or  affected 
his  policy.  It  certainly  never  overcame  his  clemency.  Of 
the  forty  men  arrested  for  the  murder  plot  of  Vowel  and 

1654  Gerard  only  two  suffered;  only  two  suffered  for  Slingby's 
plot  to  deliver  Hull  to  the  Spaniards  and  give  up  London 
to  fire  and  blood.  For  the  rising  of  the  royalists  under 


xxin  THE   PROTECTORATE  613 

Penrudclock,  though  a  number  were  transported,  few  were 
put  to  death.  Ormonde,  Cromwell's  most  formidable  as 
well  as  most  respectable  opponent,  came  to  London  in  dis- 
guise to  organize  conspiracy.  His  presence  was  detected. 
Cromwell  took  Lord  Broghill,  Ormonde's  former  associate, 
aside  and  said,  "  If  you  wish  to  do  a  kindness  to  an  old 
friend ;  Ormonde  is  in  London,  warn  him  to  be  gone." 

It  was  after  the  royalist  rising  of  Penruddock  in  the  1655 
west  that  Cromwell  had  recourse  to  the  appointment  of 
major-generals,  district  commanders  empowered,  each  in 
his  province,  to  keep  order,  organize  the  defensive  forces, 
disarm  rebellion,  and  apply  the  moral  code  of  the  Protec- 
torate. To  these  administrative  duties  was  added  the 
more  odious  and  arduous  task  of  collecting  the  income 
tax  of  ten  per  cent.,  which,  after  the  risings  in  the  north 
and  west,  the  Protector  determined  to  levy  upon  the 
Cavaliers.  An  exceptional  tax  laid  on  a  political  party 
could  be  reconciled  with  the  Act  of  amnesty  only  on  the 
strained  hypothesis  that  the  whole  party  had  been  mor- 
ally implicated  in  the  insurrection.  It  could  not  fail  to 
perpetuate  and  embitter  a  division,  which  it  was  the  ob- 
ject of  a  healing  policy  to  efface.  The  major-generals 
seem  to  have  done  their  unpopular  duty  well.  Yet  Crom- 
well felt  that  the  experiment  was  a  failure  and  allowed  it, 
when  parliament  met,  to  be  voted  down. 

With  his  royalist  enemies  the  Protector  dealt  firmly  yet 
mercifully.  With  old  republican  friends,  estranged  from 
him  and  plotting  or  acting  against  him,  such  as  Harrison, 
Ludlow,  and  Overtoil,  he  dealt  tenderly,  never  inflicting 
on  them  anything  worse  than  temporary  restraint  or  dis- 
missal from  the  service.  Nor  did  he  hurt  their  con- 
sciences by  the  imposition  of  any  test  or  oath. 


614  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

Necessity  compelled  Cromwell  to  interfere  in  some 
degree  with  the  ordinary  course  of  justice.  Lilburne, 

1653  who  came  over  from  the  continent  on  his  usual  mission 
of  unsettlement,  having  been  acquitted  by  a  sympathiz- 
ing jury,  was  sent  back  to  prison  after  his  acquittal, 
probably  for  his  own  good.  He  was  presently  liberated, 
and,  his  fire  as  an  incendiary  having  burnt  out,  died  a 

1657  Quaker  and  in  peace.  Conspirators  in  assassination  plots 
were  sent  before  a  high  court  of  justice,  consisting  of 
the  judges,  with  some  officers  of  state  and  a  number  of 
other  commissioners,  which  sat  in  Westminster  Hall,  pro- 
ceeded according  to  the  forms  of  law,  and,  unless  the  sub- 
version of  the  government  and  the  assassination  of  its 
head  were  no  crime,  shed  not  a  drop  of  innocent  blood. 

1655       One  ordinance  restrained  the  publication  of  news ;  an- 

1655  other,  towards  the  end  of  the  Protectorate,  established  a 
censorship  of  the  press.     But  it  does  not  appear  that  the 
first  ordinance  practically  went,  or  that  the  second  was 
intended  to  go,  beyond  the  actual  necessities  of  police. 
Even  a  government  after  Milton's  own  heart  could  not 
have  permitted  the  circulation  of  "  Killing  no  Murder," 
or  of  what  purported  to  be  a  royal  proclamation  promis- 
ing rewards  for  the   assassination    of   the    Protector   by 
pistol,  sword,  or  poison.     Tracts  very  hostile  to  the  Pro- 
tector  and   his   government   were    allowed    to    circulate 
with  freedom. 

Triumphant  over  royalist  rebellion,  successful  in  diplo- 
macy and  war,  Cromwell,  after  seventeen  months  of  per- 

1656  sorial  government,  ventured  again  to  call  a  parliament. 
This  time  nothing  was  to  be  risked.     The  known  mal- 
contents, about  ninety  in  number,   were  from  the  first 
excluded.     The  exclusion,  though   veiled  under  a  legal 


xxm  THE   PROTECTORATE  615 

form,  was  an  act  of  arbitrary  power.  The  justification 
for  it  was  that  if  these  members  had  been  allowed  to  take 
their  seats  they  would  have  done  their  best  to  overturn 
the  government ;  that  if  they  had  overturned  the  govern- 
ment, they  would  have  brought  in,  not  the  republic,  of 
which  Vane  dreamed,  nor  the  reign  of  the  saints,  of  which 
Harrison  dreamed,  nor  the  Covenanting  king  and  the 
Calvinistic  church,  of  which  the  Presbyterians  dreamed, 
but  the  Stuarts  ;  and  that  if  they  had  brought  in  the 
Stuarts  they  would  have  annulled  the  revolution,  wrecked 
the  cause,  and,  if  they  were  regicides,  have  set  their  own 
heads,  as  some  of  them  ultimately  did,  on  Temple  Bar. 

After  the  exclusion,  the  parliament  still  numbered  some 
three  hundred  and  sixty  members,  friendly  in  the  main. 
A  decisive  moment  had  now  arrived.  A  long  train  of 
waggons  was  bearing  through  London  streets  the  golden 
spoils  and  trophies  of  Blake's  victories  over  Spain.  A 
poet  was  writing, 

"  Let  the  brave  generals  divide  the  bough, 
Our  great  Protector  hath  such  wreaths  enow ; 
His  conquering  head  has  no  more  room  for  bays; 
Then  let  it  be  as  the  glad  nation  prays, 
Let  the  rich  ore  forthwith  be  melted  down, 
And  the  State  fixed  by  making  him  a  crown ; 
With  ermine  clad  and  purple,  let  him  hold 
A  royal  sceptre  made  of  Spanish  gold." 

The  time  seemed  to  conservatives,  probably  to  Crom- 
well himself,  to  have  come  for  completing  the  restoration 
of  the  old  political  constitution  by  reviving  the  hereditary 
monarchy  and  the  House  of  Lords.  The  Protector  was  1657 
invited  by  the  parliament  to  take  upon  him  the  govern- 
ment by  the  title  of  king. 


616  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

Then  followed  the  most  anxious  deliberation  in  Crom- 
well's life,  a  deliberation  not  the  less  anxious  because 
in  familiar  consultation  with  his  friends  his  anxiety  some- 
times disguised  itself  in  levity.  He  spoke  himself  of 
royalty  with  indifference  as  a  feather  in  the  cap,  a  shin- 
ing bauble  to  dazzle  the  kneeling  crowd.  It  is  not  in- 
credible that  a  man  who  has  done  great  things  in  a  great 
cause  may,  by  the  grace  of  Heaven,  keep  his  heart  above 
tinsel.  But  in  the  frame  of  mind  in  which  the  nation 
then  was,  the  title  of  king  might,  apart  from  any  love 
of  tinsel,  seem  essential  to  the  policy  of  reconstruction. 
The  people,  as  they  then  were,  mostly  craved  for  it.  The 
lawyers,  as  their  formularies  were  identified  with  it,  fan- 
cied that  they  could  not  get  on  without  it.  It  was  con- 
stitutional, while  the  title  of  Protector  was  revolutionary ; 
it  indemnified,  under  the  statute  of  Henry  VII.,  persons 
adhering  to  a  king  in  possession,  while  the  title  of  Pro- 
tector technically  did  not.  There  cannot  be  any  doubt  that 
Cromwell  himself  was  minded  to  accept  it.  But  the  stern 
republicans  of  the  army  were  resolved  against  monarchy. 
It  was  not  for  a  king  that  they  had  faced  death  on  the 
field  of  battle.  To  their  opposition  Cromwell  yielded. 
Probably  he  not  only  yielded  to  it,  but  respected  it.  To 
be  turned  from  his  course  by  fear,  it  has  been  truly  said, 
was  not  a  weakness  to  which  he  was  prone.  But  ardent, 
sanguine,  full  of  resources  as  he  was,  he  was  the  victim 
of  no  illusions.  He  knew  the  difference  between  the 
difficult  and  the  impossible.  He  faced  difficulty  with- 
out fear,  he  recognized  impossibility  without  repining, 
and  turned  his  mind  steadily  towards  the  future. 

So  it  was  decided  that  Cromwell  should  not  mingle  with 
the  crowd  of  kings ;  that  he  should  wear  no  crown  but 


xxin  THE   PKOTECTORATE  617 

Worcester's  laureate  wreath,  and  the  laureate  wreath  of 
Milton's  verse.  His  monarchy  would  not  have  been  a 
Stuart  monarchy.  It  would  have  been  a  constitutional 
and  protestant  monarchy,  with  parliamentary  legislation, 
parliamentary  taxation,  reform  of  the  electorate,  an  en- 
lightened and  vigorous  administrative,  the  service  of 
the  state  open  to  merit,  law  reform,  church  reform,  uni- 
versity reform,  the  union,  political  and  commercial,  of 
the  three  kingdoms,  Ireland  settled,  the  headship  of  the 
protestant  interest  in  Europe,  and  a  large,  though  not  full, 
measure  of  liberty  of  conscience.  Such  it  would  have 
been  while  its  founder  lived.  After  him  would  have  come 
a  dynasty  with  dynastic  infirmities  and  accidents.  But 
this  dynasty  would  have  been  bound,  as  a  manifest  emana- 
tion from  the  national  will,  by  pledges  even  stronger  than 
those  which  bound  the  line  of  Hanover  to  constitutional 
government.  Nor  could  it  have,  restored  prelacy. 

Part  of  the  policy  of  restoration,  however,  was  carried 
into  effect  by  the  set  of  enactments  called  the  Humble 
Petition  and  Advice,  to  which  the  Protector  gave  his  1657 
assent.  Instead  of  an  elective  Protectorate,  Cromwell 
was  empowered  to  nominate  his  successor.  The  Upper 
House  of  Parliament  was  revived.  It  was  to  consist  of 
not  more  than  seventy  or  less  than  forty  members,  to  be 
nominated  by  the  Protector  with  the  approval  of  par- 
liament. The  constitution  in  some  minor  particulars  was 
more  strictly  denned ;  it  received  for  the  first  time  as 
a  whole  the  sanction  of  parliament,  which  was  extended 
to  the  series  of  ordinances  made  under  the  Instrument 
of  Government  by  the  Protector  in  council  at  the  time 
when  parliament  was  not  sitting.  Thus  all  was  placed 
upon  a  legal  basis. 


618  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

1657  To  mark  the  legal  commencement  of  his  power,  the 
Protector  was  installed  with  greater  solemnity  than  be- 
fore and  with  ceremonies  more  resembling  a  coronation. 
An  account  of  the  pageant  is  given  us  by  Whitelock, 
who,  though  no  lever  of  Cromwell,  seems  to  have  been 
impressed.  In  Westminster  Hall,  under  a  canopy,  was 
placed  a  chair  of  state  upon  an  ascent  of  two  degrees; 
down  the  hall  were  seats  for  parliament,  the  dignitaries 
of  the  law,  the  maj^or  and  aldermen  of  London.  Thither 
on  the  twenty-sixth  of  June,  1657,  went  the  Protector 
with  his  council  of  state,  his  ministers,  gentlemen,  ser- 
geants-at-arms,  officers,  and  heralds.  His  Highness,  stand- 
ing under  the  canopy  of  state,  the  Speaker,  in  the  name  of 
the  parliament,  put  on  him  '  the  robe  of  purple  lined  with 
ermine,'  delivered  to  him  the  Bible,  richly  gilt  and  bossed, 
girt  on  him  the  sword  of  state,  and  put  a  golden  sceptre 
into  his  hands.  Only  the  crown  was  wanting.  The 
Speaker  then  gave  him  the  oath  to  observe  the  constitution, 
with  good  wishes  for  the  prosperity  of  his  government. 
The  chaplain  next  by  prayer  recommended  the  Protector, 
the  parliament,  the  council,  the  forces  by  land  and  sea, 
the  whole  government  and  people  of  the  three  nations 
to  the  blessing  and  protection  of  God.  Then  the  people 
gave  a  shout  and  the  trumpets  sounded.  The  Protector 
took  his  seat  in  the  chair  of  state,  with  the  ambassadors 
of  the  friendly  nations  and  the  high  officers  of  the  Pro- 
tectorate round  him,  and,  as  he  did  so,  the  trumpets 
sounded  again,  heralds  proclaimed  the  title  of  his  High- 
ness, and  the  people  shouted  once  more,  "  God  save  the 
Lord  Protector."  At  the  gorgeous  coronation  of  Napo- 
leon, someone  asked  the  republican  general  Augereau, 
whether  anything  was  wanting  to  the  splendour  of  the 


xxin  THE  PROTECTORATE  619 

scene.  "  Nothing,"  replied  Augereau,  "  but  the  half  mil- 
lion of  men  who  died  to  do  away  with  all  this."  There 
was  not  much  in  Cromwell's  installation  to  do  away  with 
which  any  man  had  died.  The  pageantry  was  solemn 
and  symbolic,  without  tinsel  or  outworn  forms. 

More  state,  however,  after  this  legal  inauguration  was 
observed  in  the  Protector's  household  and  about  his 
person.  His  family  was  treated  as  half  royal ;  the  title 
of  Lord  was  given  to  his  chief  officers.  He  conferred 
baronetcies,  hereditary  honours,  as  well  as  knighthood. 
He  made  two  peers.  It  is  pretty  clear  that  the  restora- 
tion of  hereditary  monarchy,  though  in  a  constitutional 
form,  and  of  an  hereditary  peerage,  was  still  in  his  mind. 
Had  he  succeeded,  there  would  have  been  an  anticipative 
1688  with  a  reformed  House  of  Commons  and  a  Puritan 
instead  of  an  Anglican  church  establishment. 

This  parliament  wasted  time  and  violated  one  of  the  1656 
fundamentals  by  the  persecution  of  Naylor,  a  fanatic. 
But  it  voted  supplies,  and  on  the  whole  during  its  first 
session  acted  cordially  with  the  Protector.  Hope  dawned 
on  the  enterprise.  But  the  dawn  was  once  more  overcast. 
When  parliament  met  again  after  the  recess  it  was  with  1658 
the  excluded  members  restored  to  their  seats  and  with  an 
upper  House.  The  upper  House  was  a  false  move  and  a 
failure.  The  selection  of  the  members  had  been  good, 
and  the  response  to  the  writs  was  on  the  whole  satisfac- 
tory, though  of  the  old  nobility  who  had  been  summoned 
most  refused  seats  beside  Cromwellian  generals  who  had 
once  been  mechanics,  while  Manchester,  as  Cromwell's  old 
enemy,  was  sure  to  decline.  Yet  the  arrangement  would 
not  work.  The  Protector  said  that  he  wanted  something 
to  stand  between  him  and  the  lower  House,  his  direct  con- 


620  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

tests  with  which  were  no  doubt  laying  a  heavy  strain 
upon  his  government.  But  to  make  up  the  House  of 
Lords  he  had  been  compelled  to  take  many  of  his  sup- 
porters from  the  House  where  the  great  battle  of  supplies 
was  to  be  fought,  and  he  had  thus  probably  broken  up 
the  lead  for  the  government  there.  The  consequence  was 
that  the  lower  House  fell  foul  of  the  upper,  and  the  ship 
became  unmanageable  once  more.  In  vain  the  Protector 
addressed  to  the  Commons  a  long  and  earnest  expos- 
tulation. Haselrig,  Scott,  and  the  other  irreconcilable 
republicans,  having  the  upper  hand  in  the  Commons, 
meant  mischief  and  were  not  to  be  soothed.  At  length 
the  Protector  had  to  dissolve  the  parliament  with  thunder 
in  his  tone.  "If  this  be  the  end  of  your  sitting  and  this 
be  your  carriage,  I  think  it  high  time  that  an  end  be  put 
1658  to  your  sitting.  And  I  do  dissolve  this  parliament.  And 
let  God  be  judge  between  you  and  me." 

In  these  contests  with  refractory  parliaments  the  sol- 
dier and  statesman  had  to  play  the  part  of  an  orator.  He 
was  too  old  to  learn  a  new  art.  He  did  not  prepare  his 
speeches ;  and  when  he  was  asked  to  write  out  one  of 
them  a  few  days  after  it  had  been  delivered,  he  declared 
that  he  could  not  remember  a  word  of  it.  Clumsier  or 
more  uncouth  compositions  than  the  reports  which  have 
come  down  to  us  the  records  of  oratory  do  not  contain. 
We  can  understand  the  contempt  expressed  for  them  by  a 
polished  sceptic  like  Hume.  The  grammar  is  hopeless, 
the  confusions  of  metaphor  are  grotesque.  We  have  God 
"  kindling  a  seed " ;  the  Lord  "  pouring  the  nation  from 
vessel  to  vessel  till  he  poured  it  into  your  lap " ;  God 
"bringing  people  to  the  edge  of  Canaan  and  enabling 
them  to  lay  the  topstone  to  their  work."  The  last  and 


xxiii  THE   PROTECTORATE  621 

most  illustrious  editor  only  provokes  our  criticism  by  his 
running  commentary  of  devout  ejaculations.  But  the 
speeches  are  not  king's  speeches.  There  runs  through 
them  all  a  strong  though  turbid  current  of  thought. 
They  are  the  utterances  of  one  who  sees  his  object  clearly, 
presses  towards  it  earnestly,  and  struggles  to  bear  forward 
in  the  same  course  the  reluctant  wills  and  wavering  minds 
of  other  men.  The  great  features  of  the  situation,  the 
great  principles  on  which  the  speaker  was  acting,  are 
brought  out,  as  Guizot  says,  with  a  breadth  and  force 
which  are  strong  proof  of  statesmanlike  intellect,  perhaps 
not  a  small  proof  of  good  faith.  He  pleaded  to  deaf  ears. 
It  is  vain  to  rail  at  those  who  refused  to  listen  to  him,  and 
thwarted  him  to  the  end.  They  were  not  great  men. 
They  were  contending,  many  of  them  at  least,  in  single- 
ness of  heart  for  what  they  believed  to  be  the  good  cause. 
They  might  say  with  truth  that  Cromwell  had  changed ; 
that  the  language  of  the  head  of  the  state  was  not  that  of 
a  soldier  of  the  revolution  ;  that  his  mind  had  grown 
broader ;  that  his  vision  had  been  purged,  since  he  had 
risen  to  a  higher  point  of  view  and  to  clearer  air  ;  and  as 
he  had  changed,  they  might  represent  him  to  themselves 
as  a  renegade.  Such  partings  there  are  in  all  revolutions. 
Nor  is  it  unlikely  that  Cromwell,  satisfied  of  the  necessity 
of  his  measures,  and  conscious  of  the  goodness  of  his  mo- 
tives, may  have  carried  matters  with  too  high  a  hand  and 
shown  too  little  respect  for  old  associations  and  for  opin- 
ions with  which  he  had  once  expressed  sympathy,  if  they 
had  not  been  in  some  degree  his  own.  Respect  is  always 
due  to  those  who  struggle  for  law  and  liberty  against  what 
they  believe  to  be  lawless  power.  Yet  these  men  were 
paving  the  way  for  the  restoration  of  the  Stuarts. 


622  THE  UNITED  KINGDOM  CHAP. 

When  the  necessary  supplies  could  not  be  obtained  from 
parliament,  the  Protector  was  compelled  to  levy  the  old 
taxes  by  ordinance  in  council.  But  he  did  this  with  re- 
luctance and  with  a  manifest  desire  to  return  to  parlia- 
mentary taxation  as  well  as  to  parliamentary  government 
in  other  respects.  The  spoils  of  Spanish  galleons  cap- 
1657~  tured  by  Blake  helped  his  treasury  for  a  time.  Still  his 
great  difficulty  was  finance.  He  was  rolling  up  debt  while 
the  pay  of  his  soldiers  was  in  arrear.  It  does  not  appear 
that  he  ever  thought  of  funding  the  debt,  which  besides 
relieving  him  of  the  financial  pressure  would  have 
bound  the  public  creditor  and  commerce  in  general  by  a 
strong  tie  to  his  government.  There  was,  at  all  events, 
no  waste  or  corruption.  The  Protector  offered  to  lay  the 
financial  administration  open  to  the  most  rigorous  inspec- 
tion. He  was  not  afraid,  he  said,  on  that  score  to  face 
the  nation.  He  was  ready  to  do  anything  except  to  allow 
the  government  to  be  overturned  ;  rather  than  that,  he 
said,  he  would  be  rolled  with  infamy  into  his  grave. 

Amidst  all  his  difficulties,  parliamentary  or  financial, 
through  all  his  struggles  with  rebellion  or  conspiracy,  the 
great  objects  of  Cromwell's  national  policy  were  steadily 
pursued.  On  what  he  deemed  a  right  settlement  of  the 
church  above  all  things  he  had  set  his  heart.  His  policy 
was  not,  like  that  of  Milton  and  the  thorough-going  Inde- 
pendents, disestablishment,  but  comprehension,  with  a 
complete  outside  toleration  of  all  tolerable  opinions,  that 
is,  of  all  except  popery,  prelacy,  and  such  as  were 
revolutionary  or  immoral.  In  London,  Lancashire,  and 
less  perfectly  elsewhere  Presbyterianism  had  been  organ- 
ized and  the  Protector  left  it ;  otherwise  Congregation- 
alism seems  to  have  been  practically  the  rule,  with  no 


xxin  THE   PROTECTORATE  623 

small  diversity  of  creeds  among  the  ministers,  Baptists 
who  did  not  object  to  an  establishment  being  included. 
For  that  day  a  great  stride  was  made  if  men  who  differed 
about  infant  baptism  could  own  a  common  Christianity 
and  worship  side  by  side.  Within  the  protestant  pale 
the  clerical  test  was  to  be  character  rather  than  creed. 
The  commissioners  appointed  under  the  Protectorate  to 
weed  and  recruit  the  church  on  that  principle  appear,  on 
the  whole,  to  have  done  their  work  well.  They  deprived 
Pocock,  the  great  orientalist,  but  this  mistake  was  set 
right.  The  anti-Cromwellian  Baxter  at  least  admits  that 
the  commission  put  in  able  and  serious  preachers  who 
lived  a  godly  life,  of  what  tolerable  opinions  soever  they 
were,  so  that  many  thousands  of  souls  blessed  God.  Of 
the  ejections,  he  says,  six  out  of  seven  were  not  for  opinion 
or  on  political  grounds,  but  for  insufficiency  or  scandalous 
conduct.  Anglicans  were  left  in  their  livings  if  they 
would  forego  the  use  of  the  Anglican  ritual.  Thus  the 
protestants  reaped  the  religious  fruits  of  the  revolution. 
The  parish  system  and  even  patronage  remained  undis- 
turbed. Some  better  mode  of  payment  than  tithe  was 
contemplated.  But  with  that  thorny  question  the  Pro- 
tector did  not  find  time  in  his  short  reign  to  deal. 

Papists  and  prelatists  were  still  excluded  from  tolera- 
tion. Prelatists,  however,  were  generally  unmolested  and 
allowed  to  hear  Jeremy  Taylor  in  peace.  Once,  after  a 
great  royalist  rising,  a  fierce  ordinance  was  launched  1655 
against  the  ejected  Episcopalian  clergymen,  who  would 
probably  be  active  in  fomenting  disturbance  ;  but  it  seems 
that  it  was  intended  only  to  intimidate,  and  that  there 
were  no  prosecutions.  There  is  reason  to  believe  that 
Cromwell  himself  was  not  disinclined  to  unprelatical 


624  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP, 

episcopacy.  He  honoured  Bishop  Usher  and  gave  two 
hundred  pounds  for  the  bishop's  funeral.  Wilkins,  who 
married  his  sister,  was  afterwards  a  bishop.  Prelatists 
were  not,  like  papists,  excluded  from  the  franchise  by  the 
Instrument  of  Government.  Papists,  popish  priests  at 
least,  Cromwell  could  not  venture  openly  to  tolerate.  But 
he  could  truly  tell  Mazarin  that  he  dealt  mercifully  with 
them,  nor  did  he  ever  rack  conscience. 

Sectaries  Cromwell  protected  as  far  as  he  dared.  Bid- 
die  the  Socinian  he  had  rescued  from  the  first  parliament; 
Naylor  he  tried  to  rescue  from  the  second  parliament,  which 
showed  its  temper  by  sentencing  a  delirious  but  harmless 
fanatic  to  be  whipped,  branded,  have  his  tongue  bored 
with  a  hot  iron,  ride  a  bare-backed  horse,  and  be  impris- 
oned during  the  parliament's  pleasure.  In  the  controversy 
between  Cromwell  and  his  parliaments,  there  can  be  no 
doubt  which  was  the  side  of  religious  freedom.  Quakers 
in  those  days  were  not  all  of  them  peaceful  children  of  the 
inner  light ;  some  of  them  were  aggressive,  interrupted 
the  worship  in  the  "  steeple-houses,"  insulted  the  preach- 
ers, and  offended  public  decency  by  going  about  naked 
and  proclaiming  woe  upon  the  realm.  Cromwell  had  to 
leave  disorder  to  be  dealt  with  by  the  magistrates.  But 
he  liked  to  commune  with  such  enthusiasts  as  George  Fox. 
This  may  have  been  partly  his  policy.  Yet  it  seems  pos- 
sible that,  much  as  his  intellect  had  grown  and  his  worldly 
wisdom  had  increased,  he  may  have  in  some  degree  re- 
tained his  simplicity,  and  have  remained  open  even  to 
fanatical  preaching  of  the  doctrine  which  had  been  to  him 
in  early  days,  the  spring  of  spiritual  life.  He  tried  to  pro- 
cure a  legal  re-admission  of  the  Jews  to  England,  whence 
they  had  beeen  excluded  since  the  time  of  Edward  I., 


xxin  THE   PROTECTORATE  625 

and,  failing  in  this,  himself  opened  the  door  to  individual 
Jewish  immigrants.  He,  of  course,  devoutly  believed  in 
the  people  of  the  old  covenant,  and  understood  as  little 
as  others  the  Talmudic  Judaism  with  which  he  had  in 
fact  to  deal  or  its  probable  working  as  a  parasitic  growth 
on  the  tree  of  national  life. 

The  years  of  Cromwell's  rule  over  Scotland,  as  Burnet, 
a  Scotchman  and  not  a  Cromwellian,  says,  were  reckoned 
years  of  great  prosperity.  This,  free  trade  with  England, 
never  before  enjoyed,  nor  for  half  a  century  to  be  enjoyed 
again,  would  in  itself  be  enough  to  secure.  Baillie,  the 
staunchest  and  narrowest  of  Presbyterians,  corroborates 
the  statement  of  Burnet  in  regard  to  Glasgow,  where  he 
lived.  Scottish  society,  after  wars  between  factions,  be- 
tween sections  and  sub-sections  of  factions,  was,  not  less 
than  that  of  England,  in  need  of  a  constable.  In  Scotland 
the  constable  was  Cromwell's  vice-gerent,  General  Monck, 
who,  while  he  was  ready  to  serve  anybody,  as  in  the  sequel 
he  showed,  served  everybody  well.  Monck  proclaimed 
the  Protectorate  with  promises  of  freedom  of  trade  with 
England ;  fair  measure  to  Scotland  in  apportioning  taxa- 
tion ;  abolition  of  all  tenures  implying  vassalage  and 
servitude  ;  liberation  from  feudal  services  ;  and  popular 
courts  baron  in  place  of  heritable  jurisdictions.  He  seems 
to  have  kept  good  order  without  giving  much  cause 
for  complaint  of  military  rule.  His  arms  carried  law 
into  the  Highlands,  whither  the  Scotch  government  had 
never  been  strong  enough  to  carry  it.  The  wild  High- 
lander was  bridled  with  forts  for  his  own  good.  Lord 
Broghill,  who  for  a  time  presided  over  the  administration, 
seems  likewise  to  have  done  well  and  even  to  have  won 
golden  opinions.  Cromwell  formed  a  plan  for  carrying 
VOL.  i  — 40 


626  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

Christianity  as  well  as  law  into  the  Highlands,  which  had 
hitherto  been  heathen.  The  yoke  of  a  most  oppressive 
aristocracy  was  broken,  and  law  reigned  in  its  place. 
Justice  was  dispensed  by  judges,  some  of  them  English,  of 
whom  a  Scottish  jobber  plaintively  spoke  as  "kinless 
loons."  Without  family  connections  to  guide  their  judg- 
ments, they  gave  satisfaction  to  the  kinless.  For  the 
kinless  altogether  it  was  a  good  time.  "  The  meaner  sort 
in  Scotland,"  an  English  official  could  say,  "live  as  well 
and  are  like  to  come  into  as  thriving  a  condition  as  when 
they  were  under  their  own  great  lords,  who  made  them 
work  for  their  living  no  better  than  the  peasants  of 
France."  A  middle  class  began  to  raise  its  salutary  head. 
Independent  soldiers  sometimes  took  the  word  of  God  out 
of  the  mouth  of  his  minister ;  sometimes  they  sat  in  deri- 
sion on  the  stool  of  repentance  ;  one  of  them,  at  least, 
guided  a  Scottish  maiden  in  ways  which  did  not  lead  to 
heaven,  and  with  the  partner  of  his  offence  was  severely 
punished.  But  on  the  whole  their  discipline  seems  to 
have  been  excellent.  Released  for  the  time  alike  from 
the  tyranny  of  the  prelates  and  from  the  tyranny  of  the 
Kirk,  the  Scottish  mind  enjoyed  a  spell  of  freedom  of  which 
it  appears  to  have  taken  advantage,  it  might  be  in  some- 
what erratic  ways.  Strong  Presbyterians,  moreover,  com- 
plained that  the  English  were  slack  in  their  persecution 
of  witches.  Scotch  patriotism  is  represented  by  recent 
writers  as  having  resolutely  rebelled  against  union  and 
brooded  over  the  memory  of  Bannockburn.  But  where 
is  the  proof  of  this?  Do  we  not  now  in  these  days  of 
historical  revival  think  more  of  Bannockburn  than  did  the 
people  of  those  timei  ?  "  All  this  prodigious  mutation 
and  transformation  had  been  submitted  to  with  the  same 


THE  PROTECTORATE  627 

resignation  and  obedience,  as  if  the  same  had  been  trans- 
mitted by  an  uninterrupted  succession  from  king  Fergus  : 
and  it  might  well  be  a  question,  whether  the  generality  of 
the  nation  was  not  better  contented  with  it,  than  to  re- 
turn into  the  old  road  of  subjection."  So  says  Clarendon 
when  by  the  Stuart  Restoration  the  union  with  Scotland 
is  being  repealed. 

That  Cromwell  wanted  to  extirpate  the  Irish  people  is 
false.  It  is  true  that  he  wanted  to  extirpate  Irishry.  He 
wanted,  that  is,  to  root  out  the  lawlessness,  turbulence, 
and  thriftlessness  which  were  the  faults  or  rather  the  mis- 
fortunes of  the  Celt,  and  to  plant  English  law,  order,  in- 
dustry, and  prosperity  in  their  room.  The  catholic  Celts 
in  1641  had  attempted  to  extirpate  the  protestant  Saxons. 
Having  been  beaten  after  a  struggle  of  hideous  atrocity, 
they  forfeited  to  the  victors  the  ownership  of  a  great 
part  of  their  land,  which  was  divided  among  adventurers 
who  had  advanced  money  for  the  war,  and  soldiers  who 
had  received  land  scrip  as  their  pay.  This  was  the  fell 
outcome  of  a  strife  perennially  waged  between  the 
races  for  the  land.  It  was  not  Cromwell's  doing,  though 
he  accepted  it  when  it  was  done.  To  take  the  land  from 
the  victor  and  restore  it  to  the  vanquished,  had  such  been 
his  desire,  would  have  been  utterly  beyond  his  power. 
Besides,  what  was  he  to  do  with  the  victorious  race? 
Eject  it  from  the  island?  Otherwise  must  there  not 
have  been  a  perpetually  renewed  war  of  race?  It  was 
evidently  the  desire  of  the  Protector  to  rule  Ireland  for 
her  good,  as  he  understood  it,  that  is  by  making  her  a 
second  England  in  order  and  industry.  When  he  was 
in  command  there  he  had  shown  himself  determined 
to  protect  the  common  people  if  they  would  be  quiet 


628  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

and  obey  the  laws.  Land-owners  and  priests  who  had 
led  rebellion  and  massacre  it  was  out  of  his  power, 
even  if  he  wished  it,  to  protect.  In  his  manifestoes  he 
addressed  the  Irish  not  as  though  they  were  Canaanites 
or  noxious  savages,  but  in  the  language  of  earnest  and 
benevolent  expostulation.  He  got  as  many  of  those  who 
had  taken  an  active  part  in  the  rebellion  as  he  could  out 
of  the  way,  at  the  same  time  ridding  the  island  of  turbu- 
lence and  brigandage,  by  his  encouragement  of  military 
emigration.  Destitute  women  and  children  unhappily 
were  left,  of  whom  some  hundreds  were  shipped  to  the 
West  Indies,  a  horrible  termination  of  a  long  train  of 
horrors.  In  keeping  up  the  proportion  between  the  sexes 
in  the  colonies  Cromwell  was  wise. 

It  is  said  that  Cromwell  ought  to  have  recognized 
Irish  nationality,  and  based  on  it  his  policy  of  reconstruc- 
tion. How  could  he  recognize  that  which  did  not  exist  ? 
The  Celts  of  Ireland  were  not  a  nation,  but  the  wreckage 
of  dissolved  clans.  Their  only  bond  of  union  besides  race 
was  a  religion,  the  priests  of  which  had  been  the  most 
active  leaders  of  the  rebellion,  with  a  papal  nuncio  at 
their  head  to  show  that  they  were  the  liegemen  of  a 
foreign  power.  Could  Cromwell  build  civilization  on 
tribalism,  industry  on  lethargy,  order  on  lawlessness,  how- 
ever fascinating  and  picturesque?  Had  his  policy  been 
maintained,  the  Celt,  in  three  out  of  the  four  provinces, 
would  have  been  for  a  time  the  labourer,  with  the  Saxon 
proprietor  for  his  master,  and  would  thus  have  received 
a  training  in  industry  of  which  he  otherwise  had  little 
chance.  Nor  could  any  Saxon  master  be  more  oppressive 
and  insolent  than  the  loafing  and  coshering  gentleman 
who  represented  the  old  Celtic  chief.  The  Mass,  Crom- 


xxin  THE   PROTECTOEATE  629 

well  plainly  told  the  Irish,  would  not  be  suffered.  But 
he  declared  that  he  meddled  with  no  man's  conscience. 
Evidently  he  did  not  want  to  meddle  more  than  he  could 
help  with  any  man's  form  of  worship.  Nor  is  it  likely 
that  Mass  ceased  to  be  performed.  The  Protector  gave 
Ireland  the  best  chance  of  peace  and  justice  by  a  legisla- 
tive union  with  England  which  brought  both  her  races 
and  both  her  religions  under  the  broad  aegis  of  imperial 
rule.  He  gave  her  deliverance  from  the  alien  Establish- 
ment. He  gave  her  the  inestimable  boon  of  free  trade 
with  England.  He  sent  her  good  government  in  the 
person  of  his  son  Henry,  who  showed  himself  on  the  side 
of  mercy  and  toleration.  He  sent  her  justice  such  as  she 
had  rarely  before  known,  in  the  person  of  his  chief  justice, 
Cooke.  He  regarded  her,  to  use  his  own  phrase,  as  a 
blank  paper,  open  for  the  trial  of  measures  of  law  reform 
to  which,  in  England,  vested  interests  were  insuperably 
opposed.  That  she  prospered  under  him  there  can  be  no 
doubt.  Clarendon,  an  adverse  witness,  testifies  to  the 
marvellous  growth  of  buildings,  not  only  for  use  but  for 
beauty,  of  plantations,  and  other  signs  of  material  im- 
provement. Had  Oliver  lived  longer,  or  left  heirs  of  his 
policy,  Ireland,  three  parts  of  it  at  least,  might  have  been 
as  Ulster,  and  the  Irish  problem  would,  in  one  way  at  all 
events,  have  been  solved.  Of  the  disasters  and  horrors 
which  followed  the  dissolution  of  the  union  ;  of  the  gov- 
ernment of  Ireland  as  a  dependency  by  crown  influence 
and  corruption  ;  of  the  restoration  of  the  alien  church 
with  its  bloated  uselessness  and  its  tithe-proctors  ;  of  the 
fatal  shackles  laid  on  Irish  trade  and  industry  ;  of  the 
rekindling  of  the  fires  of  enmity  between  the  races  and 
religions  under  James  II.;  of  the  outpouring  of  pro- 


630  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

testant  vengeance  in  penal  legislation  against  the  catholics 
which  ensued,  the  blame  rests,  not  on  the  Protector,  but 
on  those  by  whom  his  work  was  undone.  The  restrictions 
afterwards  laid  on  Irish  trade  and  industry  by  the  com- 
mercial jealousy  of  England  were  fully  as  great  a  source 
of  mischief  as  anything  else,  and  these  would  have  been 
precluded  by  the  union. 

Not  least  among  the  objects  of  the  Protector's  policy 
was  law  reform.  Had  not  professional  prejudice  stood  in 
the  way,  had  not  the  sons  of  Zeruiah,  to  use  his  own 
phrase,  been  too  strong  for  him,  he  would  have  put  an  end 
to  the  delays  of  the  court  of  chancery  and  to  the  absurd  or 
iniquitous  mysteries  of  technical  law.  What  he  was  de- 
barred from  doing  in  England  he  did  in  Ireland,  where 
the  despatch  of  causes  by  his  chief  justice  put  to  shame 
the  dilatoriness  of  the  English  courts.  He  would  also 
have  revised  the  criminal  law  in  the  light  of  humanity. 
Though  never  theoretically  a  democrat,  and  now  half 
a  king,  he  was  still  a  man  of  the  people,  and  a  friend  of 
justice  to  the  poor.  It  was  a  scandalous  thing,  he  said, 
that  a  man  should  be  hanged  for  a  theft  of  twelvepence 
or  sixpence,  when  greater  crimes  went  unpunished.  Had 
he  succeeded,  the  savage  multiplication  of  capital  offences 
which  dyed  the  code  of  the  next  century  with  blood 
might  have  been  averted,  and  the  work  of  Romilly  might 
have  been  forestalled.  The  Protector's  power  was  used 
for  popular  purposes  though  concentrated  in  a  strong 
hand. 

1655  Commerce  was  strenuously  fostered.  A  committee  of 
trade  was  formed,  and  Whitelock,  who  was  one  of  the 
members,  tells  us  that  this  was  an  object  on  which  the 
Protector's  heart  was  greatly  set.  To  open  up  trade,  as 


xxin  THE   PROTECTORATE  631 

well  as  to  form  a  protestant  league,  treaties  were  made 
with  the  northern  powers.  The  treaty  with  Denmark 
opened  the  Sound.  There  was  free  trade  with  Scotland 
and  Ireland.  Cromwell  may,  therefore,  rank  among  the 
free  traders.  He  believed  in  the  navigation  laws,  but  so 
did  Adam  Smith ;  and,  in  truth,  the  navigation  laws, 
though  rightly  repealed  in  our  time,  appear,  as  a  meas- 
ure of  national  policy  in  a  struggle  with  commercial  rivals, 
who  were  not  cosmopolitan,  to  have  had  the  desired  effect. 
The  colonial  policy  of  the  Protectorate  seems  to  have 
been  liberal  and  benevolent.  The  Puritan  Protector 
showed  his  love  of  Puritan  New  England  by  respecting 
her  independence  while  he  favoured  her  trade.  "  English 
history,"  says  the  American  historian,  "must  judge  of 
Cromwell  by  his  influence  on  the  institutions  of  England; 
the  colonies  remember  the  years  of  his-  power  as  the  period 
when  British  sovereignty  was  for  them  free  from  rapacity, 
intolerance,  and  oppression."  That  abstention  from  inter- 
ference did  not  proceed  from  lack  of  interest  in  the 
colonies  the  Protector  showed  by  his  attention  to  the 
affairs  of  Newfoundland,  to  which  he  sent  the  first  real 
governor  in  the  person  of  the  able  and  honest  Treworgie.  1653 
"Even  in  our  island,"  says  the  last  local  historian  of 
Newfoundland,  "the  sagacious  statesmanship  and  firm, 
strong  hand  of  Cromwell  made  themselves  felt."  In 
proposing  to  transfer  the  New  Englanders  to  Jamaica, 
the  Protector's  object  probably  was  not  only  to  give  them 
a  more  genial  abode,  but  to  plant  a  stronghold  of  pro- 
testantism and  of  English  commerce  within  the  realms 
granted  by  the  papacy  to  Spain.  Herein  he  erred,  and 
mankind  may  be  thankful  to  the  fathers  of  the  American 
republic  who  clung  to  their  austere  home. 


632  THE   UNITED    KINGDOM  CHAP. 

Of  Cromwell's  foreign  policy  the  great  aim  was  to  unite 
protestant  Christendom  and  put  England  at  its  head.  He 
bore  himself  as  the  successor  of  Gustavus  Adolphus  and 
of  the  councillors  of  Elizabeth.  He  formed  alliances  with 
the  protestant  powers,  Holland,  Sweden,  and  Denmark. 
Christina,  queen  of  Sweden,  the  daughter  of  Gustavus, 
before  the  madness  which  mingled  with  the  heroic  blood 
of  Vasa  had  made  her  its  prey,  heartily  acknowledged  her 
father's  heir.  Her  master  of  ceremonies  was  not  so  kind ; 
but  when  Whitelock,  the  English  ambassador,  made  his 
entry  into  the  Swedish  capital  it  snowed;  and  it  was  trying 
for  the  master  of  ceremonies  to  stand  bareheaded  in  a 
snowstorm,  bowing  to  the  representative  of  a  regicide 
republic.  It  appears  that  Cromwell  had  thought  of  a  still 
closer  union  of  protestant  states,  and  even  of  some  common 
organ  for  the  propagation  of  protestantism  to  countervail 
the  catholic  Propaganda.  When  the  papal  Duke  of  Savoy 
persecuted  with  hellish  cruelty  the  people  of  the  pro- 

1656  testant  valleys,  Cromwell  at  once  stretched  his  mighty 
arm  over  his  oppressed  brethren  in  the  faith.  The 
passionate  zeal  which  he  showed  in  this  cause,  and  which 
rings  through  his  secretary's  sonnet,  amidst  all  his  home 
difficulties,  and  with  the  dagger  of  the  assassin  at  his 
breast,  seems  a  strong  proof  of  the  genuineness  of  his 
religious  feeling.  In  chastising  by  the  hand  of  Blake  the 

1655  pirates  of  Algiers  and  Tunis,  he  presented  himself  as  the 
champion  of  Christendom.  Having  to  choose  between 
France  and  Spain,  on  the  rivalry  between  which  Euro- 
pean policy  hinged,  Cromwell  decided  for  France  on  the 
religious  ground.  France,  he  said,  though  catholic,  was 
less  papal  than  Spain,  while  Mazarin  was  no  bigot,  but 
an  Italian  statesman,  and  feared  Cromwell,  men  thought, 


xxin  THE  PROTECTORATE  633 

more  than  the  devil.  In  fact,  Cromwell  was  able  through 
his  influence  over  Mazarin  to  extend  his  protection  to  the 
Huguenots. 

Was  this  policy  an  anachronism?  Had  the  treaty  of 
Westphalia  finally  closed  the  struggle  between  the  relig- 
ions in  Europe  ?  The  Vaudois  were  still  being  persecuted. 
The  Huguenots  were  still  being  harassed.  The  fires  of 
the  Inquisition  were  still  burning.  Louis  XIV.,  with  his 
satrap,  James  II.,  the  revocation  of  the  Edict  of  Nantes, 
the  expulsion  of  the  protestants  of  Salzburg,  were  still  to 
come.  Two  contrasted  and  antagonistic  masses  of  opinion 
and  character,  two  realms  which  to  a  fervent  protestant 
might  seem,  one  that  of  light,  the  other  that  of  darkness, 
still  divided  Europe.  Apart  from  specific  dogma,  pro- 
testant countries  were  natural  allies.  The  Puritanism 
of  which  Cromwell  was  himself  the  offspring  and  the 
champion,  was  it  not  a  birth  of  that  day,  and  was  not 
the  papacy  its  natural  foe?  Cromwell  was  a  religious 
enthusiast  without  much  culture.  His  enthusiasm,  when 
it  came  into  play,  was  not  unlikely  to  carry  him  beyond  the 
bounds  of  reason.  From  this  tendency  his  project  of  pro- 
testant union  under  English  leadership  may  not  have  been 
free.  At  all  events  his  policy  was  moral  and  grand. 

Less  easy  is  it  to  defend  the  Protector's  conduct  in 
attacking  Spain  without  definite  cause  or  declaration  of  war. 
Here  he  may  well  be  said  to  have  been  acting  out  of  date,  in 
the  spirit  of  the  Elizabethan  buccaneers.  Nor  can  it  be 
doubted  that  his  object  was  in  part  to  replenish  his  empty 
treasury  from  the  treasure  fleets  of  Spain,  though  it  was 
in  part  to  break,  in  the  interest  of  England,  the  Spanish 
monopoly  of  those  golden  realms.  His  apology  would  be 
that  there  was  no  peace  beyond  the  line,  and  that  in  those 


634  THE   UNITED    KINGDOM  CHAP. 

waters  Spain,  on  the  strength  of  a  papal  grant,  waged  per- 
petual war  on  all  mankind.  It  might  also  be  pleaded  for 
him  that  there  was  what  may  be  called  normal  war  be- 
tween France  and  Spain;  that  both  those  powers  had 
courted  his  alliance,  and  neither  could  complain  if  he  ac- 
cepted the  alliance  of  its  rival.  If  he,  and  England  with 
him,  sinned,  the  punishment  followed  ;  for  the  possession 
of  Jamaica  and  the  other  slave  islands  proved  a  curse,  and 
a  burden,  though  mitigated  by  emancipation,  it  remains  at 
this  hour. 

It  has  been  truly  said  that  Englishmen  are  not  at  ease 
in  their  aggrandizement  unless  they  can  believe  them- 
selves to  have  a  moral  object,  and  that  Cromwell  was  in 
this  respect  a  typical  Englishman.  But  the  combination 
was  more  genuine,  the  illusion  at  least  was  easier  in  the 
case  of  one  who  served  the  God  of  the  Old  Testament 
than  it  is  in  that  of  the  imperialist  of  the  present  day. 

To  the  charge  of  having  unwisely  taken  part  with  the 
more  dangerous  against  the  less  dangerous  of  the  two 
powers,  the  fair  answer  would  be  that  the  decay  of 
Spain  was  not  then  apparent ;  that  nobody  could  have 
foreseen  Louis  XIV. ;  and  that  Louis  XIV.  would  never 
have  been  the  tyrant  of  Europe  if  England  had  not  been 
put  under  his  feet  by  the  restored  Stuarts. 

England  seems  to  have  still  hankered  for  a  Calais  as  a 
gate  for  her  continental  ambition.  Cromwell  won  for 
her,  as  the  price  of  his  alliance  with  France,  Dunkirk,  an 
1658  acquisition  which  would  now  be  insane,  but  was  less  so 
when  Dunkirk  was  a  commercial  key  and  had  been  a 
lair  of  privateers. 

To  the  fatal  war  with  the  Dutch,  Cromwell's  wisdom 
put  an  end,  though  he  was  too  haughty  and  exacting  in 


THE   PROTECTORATE  635 

his  negotiations  for  peace.  His  chief  object  was  the  exclu- 
sion from  power  of  the  house  of  Orange,  allied  by  mar- 
riage to  the  Stuarts.  This  he  obtained,  not  from  the 
States  General,  but  from  Holland,  the  republican  rulers 
of  which  were  no  less  desirous  of  keeping  the  Stadthold- 
erate  in  abeyance  than  Cromwell  was  of  depriving  the 
Stuart  pretender  of  support.  The  protestant  republics 
were  natural  allies  of  the  protestant  commonwealth,  but 
commercial  rivalry  prevailed,  and  the  estrangement  had 
been  increased  by  the  late  war. 

Of  the  majesty  with  which  this  upstart  bore  himself 
in  his  dealings  with  foreign  powers,  of  the  height  of 
grandeur  to  which  he  raised  his  country,  the  royalist  his- 
torian is  the  unwilling  witness.  He  gave  England  a  con- 
fidence in  herself  which  she  has  never  lost.  He  perhaps 
gave  her  too  much  confidence  in  herself,  at  least  taught 
her  to  be  too  self-asserting.  His  saying  that  he  would 
make  the  name  of  Englishman  what  that  of  Roman  had 
been,  a  swelling  phrase  on  his  lips,  becomes  mere  arro- 
gance on  ours.  Between  him  and  the  jingo  of  the  present 
day  if  there  is  an  affinity,  the  contrast  also  is  great. 

A  Puritan  government  was  always  in  danger  of  med- 
dling too  much  with  private  tastes  and  habits.  Yet  the 
meddling  does  not  seem  to  have  been  very  vexatious  or 
oppressive.  Bear-baiting,  bull-fighting,  and  cock-fighting 
were  prohibited.  Horse-racing  was  forbidden  for  a  time, 
but  a  major-general  gives  permission  for  a  horse-race, 
saying  that  it  is  not  the  Protector's  intention  to  abridge 
gentlemen  of  their  sport,  but  only  to  prevent  the  con- 
fluence of  enemies  to  the  government.  Cromwell  himself 
was  a  lover  of  horses.  If  betting  was  prohibited,  few, 
seeing  what  a  gambling-table  the  turf  can  become,  would 


636  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

deem  the  prohibition  noxious.  Duelling,  the  privilege  of 
a  caste,  was  denied  to  the  gentry.  Houses  of  ill-fame  and 
gambling-houses  were  suppressed  ;  the  licensing  of  taverns 
was  strictly  controlled.  The  boundary  of  legitimate 
interference  was  approached  when  blasphemy  and  swear- 
ing were  made  penal.  It  was  overstepped  when  May- 
poles were  prohibited  as  heathen.  Village  wakes  may 
have  been  sometimes  scenes  of  riot.  Harsh  and  mis- 
chievous was  the  closing  of  the  theatre,  though,  if  the 
office  of  the  drama  is  to  purify  the  affections,  its  office  was 
hardly  performed  by  the  drama  of  the  later  Stuarts. 
Players  were  treated  as  vagabonds.  Opera  was  allowed, 
the  Protector  being  fond  of  music.  Light,  though  not 
licentious  literature  was  free  and  abounded.  The  worst 
of  the  system  probably  was  the  Puritan  Sabbath,  with  its 
dull  gloom  and  its  denial  of  innocent  pastimes  on  Sunday 
afternoon.  In  reading  Evelyn's  diary  we  do  not  feel  that 
there  is  a  pall  over  social  life,  while  the  opening  pages  of 
Pepys  introduce  us  at  once  to  a  convivial  and  card-playing 
society.  Still,  there  may  have  been  enough  of  restraint 
to  cause  natural  disaffection  and  to  make  a  large,  though 
not  the  best,  class  welcome  a  return  to  license. 

Cromwell  was  not,  like  Eliot,  Pym,  and  Hampden,  culti- 
vated ;  yet  he  had  been  bred  at  a  classical  school  and  at 
Cambridge,  and,  what  was  of  more  consequence,  he  had 
been  trained  intellectually  by  converse  with  the  highest 
intellects  on  the  highest  subjects  of  the  time.  Though 
unlearned  himself,  he  fostered  learning.  He  saved  the 
Universities  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge  from  the  fanaticism 
which  would  have  destroyed  them  as  seats  of  mere  human 
knowledge.  Of  the  University  of  Oxford  he  made  him- 
self chancellor,  and  startling  is  the  appearance  of  his  name 


xxiii  THE   PROTECTORATE  637 

in  a  series  of  high  churchmen  and  Tories.  He  founded  1657 
the  University  of  Durham.  Alone  of  English  princes  he 
set  himself  to  draw  merit  and  promise  from  the  universi- 
ties into  the  service  of  the  state.  The  men  whom  he 
placed  in  academical  office  were  Puritans,  of  course,  and 
as  Puritans  narrow,  but  they  were  learned,  and  ruled  well. 
Nor  was  the  narrowness  extreme,  since  now  it  was  that 
Oxford  was  in  part  the  home  of  the  circle,  including 
Wilkins,  Boyle,  Wallis,  Seth  Ward,  and  Wren,  which 
gave  birth  to  the  Royal  Society.  At  the  Restoration, 
Clarendon  found  the  University  of  Oxford  abounding  in 
excellent  learning,  a  result  due,  as  he  thinks,  to  the  good- 
ness and  richness  of  the  soil,  which  could  not  be  made 
barren  by  all  the  stupidity  and  negligence,  but  choked  the 
weeds  and  would  not  suffer  the  poisonous  seeds,  which 
were  sown  with  industry  enough,  to  spring  up.  The  soil 
must  have  exhausted  its  virtues  in  the  effort,  if  we  may 
judge  from  its  products  after  the  Restoration.  Mr. 
Masson  has  given  us  a  list  of  about  seventy  men  of 
literary  or  scientific  celebrity,  actual  or  to  come,  who  were 
alive  at  the  midpoint  of  Oliver's  Protectorate,  and  lived 
under  his  rule,  some  freely  and  others  by  compulsion. 
The  list  includes,  besides  religious  writers  and  preachers, 
Waller,  Milton,  Harrington,  Wilkins,  Wallis,  Cudworth, 
Algernon  Sidney,  Andrew  Marvell,  Petty,  Boyle,  Bunyan, 
Temple,  Dryden,  Locke,  Hales,  Hobbes,  Walton,  Fuller, 
Pocock,  Davenant,  Browne,  Jeremy  Taylor,  Cleveland, 
Denham,  Cowley,  Barrow,  and  South.  Hobbes,  Dave- 
nant, and  Cowley  are  instances  of  men  who  returned 
from  exile  to  live  and  write  under  the  Protector's  rule. 

"  Cromwell,"   says  Burnet,  "  studied  to  seek  out  able 
and  honest  men  and  to  employ  them  ;  and  so  having  heard 


638  THE    UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

that  my  father  had  a  very  great  reputation  in  Scotland  for 
piety  and  integrity,  though  he  knew  him  to  be  a  royalist, 
he  sent  to  him  desiring  him  to  accept  of  a  judge's  place 
and  to  do  justice  in  his  own  country,  hoping  only  that  he 
would  not  act  against  his  government ;  but  he  would  not 
press  him  to  subscribe  or  swear  to  it."  The  man  had  a 
royal  eye  for  merit  and  a  royal  heart  to  advance  it  in  the 
state.  He  was  not  too  nice  in  scrutinizing  the  opinions  of 
able  men,  nor,  so  long  as  they  served  England  well,  did  he 
too  curiously  inquire  how  they  would  serve  Cromwell. 
There  is  no  pledge  of  genuine  greatness  rarer  or  more 
decisive  than  the  choice  of  men  as  associates  who  will  not 
be  tools.  Blake,  who  gained  the  naval  victories  of  the 
Protectorate,  was  a  republican  ;  Lockhart,  the  chief  in- 
strument of  the  Protector's  foreign  policy  and  one  of 
the  first  diplomatists  of  the  day,  as  well  as  a  distinguished 
soldier,  was  an  old  royalist  whose  value  Cromwell  had 
discerned  ;  so  was  Monck.  Broghill,  who  served  the  Pro- 
tectorate well  in  various  capacities,  not  only  was  a  zealous 
royalist,  but  was  on  the  point  of  departure  for  the  conti- 
nent to  concert  measures  with  Charles  II.  when  Cromwell 
surprised  him  by  a  visit  and  made  him  his  own.  White- 
lock,  the  Protector's  legal  adviser,  was,  as  Cromwell  must 
have  known,  far  from  a  devoted  Oliverian.  Sir  Matthew 
Hale,  chief  justice  under  the  Protectorate,  had  been  coun- 
sel to  Strafford  and  Laud,  and  had  tendered  his  services  to 
the  king  ;  he  well  justified  the  Protector's  choice  by  brav- 
ing the  wrath  of  the  Protector  himself,  who,  tried  beyond 
endurance  by  the  resistance  to  the  establishment  of  his 
government,  had  been  betrayed  into  one  of  those  brief 
outbreaks  of  arbitrary  temper  which,  though  culpable  in 
themselves,  showed  by  contrast  his  general  desire  of  gov- 


xxm  THE  PROTECTORATE  639 

erning  by  law.  The  Protector's  second  self  was  Thurloe, 
a  man  of  supreme  ability  and  the  rival  of  Walsingham 
in  the  skill  with  which  he  managed  the  secret  service  so 
necessary  to  the  safety  of  his  chief  and  of  government. 
A  conspirator  assured  Cromwell  that  when  in  France  he 
had  not  seen  the  Pretender.  He  was  told  that  he  spoke 
the  truth,  since  the  interview  had  been  in  the  dark.  Lock- 
hart  passed  afterwards  into  the  service  of  the  Restoration 
as  ambassador  at  Paris,  and  still  showed  the  spirit  of  the 
Protectorate  in  altered  times.  The  king  of  France  pro- 
duced a  private  letter  from  the  king  of  England,  obtained 
by  corrupt  influence  and  contrary  to  Lockhart's  public 
instructions.  "  Sire,"  said  Lockhart,  "  the  king  of  Eng- 
land speaks  to  your  Majesty  only  through  me." 

Royal  natures,  even  on  a  throne,  love  simplicity  of  life. 
The  Protector  was  treated  as  half  a  king ;  he  had  a  court 
and  he  kept  state  as  the  head  of  a  nation.  But  it  was 
a  state  modest  and  rational  compared  with  that  of  a 
Grand  Monarch.  Unrefined,  and  accustomed  to  the  com- 
radeship of  the  camp,  he  was  apt  in  private  to  relieve  his 
burdened  mind  with  rude  humour,  boisterous  merriment, 
and  even  practical  jokes.  But  when  he  received  ambassa- 
dors, he  knew  how  to  show  himself  the  peer  of  kings.  A 
leading  part  of  his  entertainments  was  music,  which  was 
his  chief  pleasure.  The  court  was  the  first  household 
in  England,  and,  as  enemies  confessed,  a  good  pattern 
to  others,  though  it  might  not  be  altogether  free  from 
upstart  vanity  or  intrigue.  Whitehall  was  the  scene 
of  work.  But  sometimes  the  Protector  shuffled  off  his 
coil  of  anxious  business,  and  escorted  by  his  life  guards, 
whose  attendance  was  no  needless  pageantry,  rode  down 
to  Hampton  Court.  There  he  refreshed  his  soul  with 


640  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

quiet  and  country  air.  Thither  he  had  brought  an  organ 
to  chase  away  for  an  hour  the  throng  of  eating  cares. 
His  chief  joy  and  comfort,  however,  were  in  his  family, 
to  which  through  all  the  chances  and  changes  of  his  life, 
alike  in  trial  and  in  victory,  his  heart  had  turned.  All 
the  members  of  it  were  gathered  round  him  in  the  hour 
of  his  greatness  and  of  his  peril,  and  remained  bound  by 
strong  affection  to  him  and  to  each  other.  One  was  miss- 

1644  ing,  Oliver,  the  eldest,  who  had  died  when  in  arms  for 
the  cause,  and  whose  image,  as  we  know  from  Cromwell's 
last  utterances,  never  left  his  father's  heart.  Among  the 
rest  the  Protector's  mother,  ninety  years  old,  was  brought 
to  a  scene  strange  to  her  and  in  which  she  had  little  com- 
fort, for  every  report  of  a  gun  she  heard  seemed  to  her 
her  son's  death,  and  she  could  not  bear  to  pass  a  day  with- 
out seeing  him  with  her  own  eyes.  We  may  trust  the 
brief  account  of  her  end  which  is  found  among  the  dry 
state  papers  of  the  unsentimental  Thurloe.  "  My  Lord 

1654  Protector's  mother,  ninety-four  years  old,  died  last  night. 
A  little  before  her  death  she  gave  my  lord  her  blessing  in 
these  words,  '  The  Lord  cause  his  face  to  shine  upon  you 
and  comfort  you  in  all  your  adversities,  and  enable  you  to 
do  great  things  for  the  glory  of  your  Most  High  God,  and 
to  be  a  relief  unto  His  people.  My  dear  son,  I  leave  my 
heart  with  thee.  A  good  night.' '  Jealousies  there  were 
sure  to  be  in  a  new-made  court. 

It  was  impossible  that  a  government  resting  on  an  army 
should  ever  cease  to  wear  the  aspect  of  a  dominion  of  the 
sword,  or  fail  to  be  in  that  respect  odious  to  a  free  and 
law-loving  nation.  But  the  discipline  of  Cromwell's  sol- 
diers was  excellent.  "  Sure,"  says  Clarendon,  "  there  was 
never  any  such  body  of  men  so  without  rapine,  swearing, 


xxin  THE   PROTECTORATE  641 

drinking,  or  any  other  debauchery  but  the  wickedness 
of  their  hearts." 

The  Protector's  government  was  taking  root,  as  a  gov- 
ernment, whatever  its  title,  was  sure  to  do  when  it  gave 
the  people  peace  at  home,  grandeur  abroad,  free  trade,  an 
open  course  for  industry,  and  practical  improvement. 
Even  the  old  nobility  were  becoming  satisfied  of  its  stabil- 
ity, and  willing  to  ally  themselves  with  the  blood  of  its 
chief.  Lord  Fauconberg  married  one  daughter  of  Crom- 
well ;  the  heir  of  the  Earl  of  Warwick  married  another. 
The  crown  and  church  lands  had  sold  well  and  their  pur- 
chasers had  formed  a  guard  for  the  new  order  of  things, 
like  that  formed  for  the  French  revolution  by  the  peasant 
proprietary  which  it  had  created,  though  on  a  far  smaller 
scale.  Foreign  powers  evidently  thought  the  Protectorate 
firmly  established.  Financial  difficulties  were  pressing ; 
there  was  a  debt  of  upwards  of  two  millions  and  an  an- 
nual deficit;  parliamentary  supply  was  indispensable;  but 
Cromwell  was  looking  forward  to  meeting  parliament 
again,  and  apparently  with  a  fair  prospect  of  success. 

On  the  threshold  of  success  was  death  ;  it  was  death  1658 
for  the  Protector  in  a  strange  form  ;  for,  after  all  the 
battles  and  sieges,  and  all  the  plots  of  assassins,  he  died  of 
grief  at  the  loss  of  a  favourite  daughter  and  of  watching 
at  her  side.  When  he  found  his  end  approaching  he 
turned  resolutely  from  the  world  to  God.  Napoleon's  last 
words  were  "  Tete  d'armSe  "/  Cromwell's  were  a  prayer 
not  unworthy  to  be  the  last  utterance  of  Puritanism,  which 
in  fact  expired  when  he  died.  A  hurricane  which  blew 
just  before  his  death  seemed  to  mark  the  momentous  char- 
acter of  the  event,  and  to  presage  the  storms  which  were 
to  come. 

VOL.   I  —  41 


642  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

Hallani,  the  most  orthodox  of  Whigs,  hating  the  relig- 
ious enthusiast  and  the  political  usurper,  says  that  the 
Protector  had  sucked  only  the  dregs  of  a  besotted  fanat- 
icism, and  contrasts  him  with  Napoleon,  to  whom  the 
stores  of  reason  and  philosophy  were  open.  Cromwell's 
fanaticism,  at  all  events,  did  not  lead  him  to  sacrifice  the 
lives  of  millions  and  the  happiness  of  nations  to  the  star 
of  his  own  destiny.  Yet  he  had  set  out  as  a  fanatic, 
though  his  fanaticism  was  sincere  and  grand.  Nor  could 
he  ever  entirely  put  off  the  intellectual  or  the  moral 
obliquity  by  which  the  character  is  beset.  Up  dangerous 
paths  he  had  climbed,  or  rather  had  been  drawn,  to  the 
height  of  power,  and  no  doubt  he  had  more  than  once 
slipped  on  the  way.  On  one  terrible  occasion  he  had 
slipped  indeed.-  That  he  had  been  led  far  from  the  sim- 
plicity of  his  early  faith  and  enthusiasm,  he  was  not  uncon- 
scious. On  his  death-bed,  he  asked  a  minister  whether 
those  who  had  once  been  in  a  state  of  grace  could  fall 
from  it,  and  being  told  that  they  could  not,  said  that  if  it 
was  so,  he  was  saved,  for  he  was  sure  that  he  had  once 
oeen  in  a  state  of  grace.  He  had  undergone  the  evil  influ- 
ences, not  only  of  faction,  but  of  civil  strife.  His  vision 
as  a  statesman  could  not  extend  beyond  the  horizon  of  his 
age,  an  age  of  state  churches,  of  commercial  monopoly,  of 
religious  and  territorial  war.  But  without  being  a  demi- 
god, he  may  have  been  a  very  great  man.  Nor  is  it 
strange  that  to  a  very  great  man  a  great  nation  in  the 
throes  of  a  revolution  which  stirred  the  depths  of  its  soul, 
should  have  given  birth.  The  Protector's  greatness  ex- 
torted the  respect  of  enemies  who  countenanced  plots 
against  his  life  and  afterwards  trampled  on  his  corpse.  So 
much  surely  has  never  been  done  by  any  other  ruler  in 


xxin  THE   PROTECTORATE  643 

five  troubled  years,  amidst  constant  danger  to  his  person 
as  well  as  to  his  government.  A  longer  period  of  Crom- 
well, or  of  persistence  in  his  policy,  might  have  averted 
not  only  the  reaction  in  England,  with  all  the  evil  which 
it  wrought,  but  the  ascendancy  of  Louis  XIV.,  and  have 
changed  the  course  of  European  history.  The  three  king- 
doms would  have  remained  united,  free  trade  among  them 
might  have  sealed  the  union,  and  they  would  all  have  been 
rid  of  state  prelacy.  For  the  time  Cromwell's  work  was 
undone,  and  on  his  fame  settled  a  cloud  of  obloquy,  which 
now  and  then  lifted  when  disaster  and  disgrace  under 
other  governments  forced  England  to  think  of  his  glory. 
Nor  was  this  feeling  otherwise  than  creditable  to  the 
nation  so  far  as  it  arose  from  abhorrence,  however  mis- 
directed, of  usurpation,  and  from  respect  for  constitutional 
liberty  and  law.  The  cloud  is  now  dispersed,  and  Crom- 
well's work  and  name  are  accepted  by  his  countrymen,  to 
some  of  whom,  perhaps,  he  has  become  an  object  of  ex- 
cessive admiration.  As  the  world  goes  on  and  intelli- 
gence spreads  the  importance  of  individual  leaders  grows 
less,  and  hero-worship  as  a  serious  theory,  if  it  is  appli- 
cable to  the  past,  is  not  applicable  to  the  present.  Yet, 
at  a  crisis,  there  may  still  be  a  call  for  a  leader,  and 
it  is  something  to  know  that  England  has  produced  a 
leader  indeed.  Posthumous  influence  through  their 
works  is  given  to  many,  personal  influence  beyond  their 
lives  to  few,  but  among  those  few  is  Oliver  Cromwell. 
Maidstone,  who  was  steward  of  the  Protector's  house- 
hold, said  after  his  death,  when  flattery,  at  all  events,  was 
mute,  "  His  body  was  well  compact  and  strong,  his 
stature  under  six  feet  (I  believe,  about  two  inches),  his 
head  so  shaped  as  you  might  see  it  a  store-house  and  shop 


644  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

both,  of  a  vast  treasury  of  natural  parts.  His  temper 
exceedingly  fiery,  as  I  have  known ;  but  the  flame  of  it, 
kept  down  for  the  most  part,  was  soon  allayed  with  those 
moral  endowments  he  had.  He  was  naturally  compassion- 
ate towards  objects  in  distress,  even  to  an  effeminate 
measure  ;  though  God  had  made  him  a  heart  wherein  was 
left  little  room  for  any  fear  but  what  was  due  to  Himself, 
of  which  there  was  large  proportion.  A  larger  soul,  I 
think,  hath  seldom  dwelt  in  a  house  of  clay  than  his  was. 
I  do  believe,  if  his  story  were  impartially  transmitted,  and 
the  unprejudiced  world  well  possessed  with  it,  she  would 
add  him  to  her  nine  worthies,  and  make  up  that  number  a 
decemviri.  He  lived  and  died  in  comfortable  communion 
with  God,  as  judicious  persons  near  him  well  observed. 
He  was  that  Mordecai  'that  sought  the  welfare  of  his 
people,  and  spake  peace  to  his  seed  ;'  yet  were  his  temp- 
tations such  as  it  appeared  frequently  that  he,  that  hath 
grace  enough  for  many  men,  may  have  too  little  for  him- 
self ;  the  treasure  he  had  being  but  in  an  earthen  vessel, 
and  that  equally  defiled  with  original  sin  as  any  other 
man's  nature  is."  The  last  sentence  shows  that  Maidstone, 
though  a  loving,  was  not  a  wholly  uncritical  observer. 

Evolutionists  must  admit  that,  after  all,  much  depends 
upon  the  man.  Who  was  to  fill  Cromwell's  place?  It 
seems  that  he  had  executed  a  paper  naming  his  successor, 
but  the  paper  could  not  be  found.  There  appears  no 
reason  to  doubt  that  in  his  last  moments  he  nominated  his 
eldest  son,  Richard.  Richard  was  weak,  as  his  father  must 
have  too  well  known.  But  who  else  was  there  ?  Henry, 
the  younger  son,  was  a  man  of  fine  character  and  had  ruled 
Ireland  well,  but  he  was  not  strong  enough  to  stand  by 


xxin  THE  PROTECTORATE  645 

his  own  strength  alone.  Ireton  was  dead.  Of  the  army 
chiefs  not  one  was  a  statesman  ;  Lambert,  the  most  brill- 
iant soldier,  least  of  all.  Fleetwood  was  not  more  than 
respectable.  Desborough  was  a  hot  republican  full  of  tur- 
bulent ambition.  Thurloe  and  Broghill  were  statesmen, 
but  they  had  no  hold  on  the  army  and  no  following. 
There  was  Fairfax ;  but  Fairfax  had  sunk  the  soldier  of 
the  Commonwealth  in  the  grandee,  and  had  married  his 
daughter  to  the  by  no  means  Puritan  Duke  of  Buck- 
ingham. Richard  had  the  shadow  of  hereditary  right. 
He  was  a  country  gentleman  and  sportsman  with  little  of 
the  Puritan  about  him.  He  had  scarcely  mingled  in  poli- 
tics ;  he  was  free  from  the  stain  of  regicide ;  he  had  made 
no  enemies ;  he  was  personally  popular  even  with  Cava- 
liers. On  the  other  hand,  he  was  not  a  soldier  and  had  no 
hold  upon  the  army.  His  undisturbed  succession,  how- 
ever, showed  that  the  Protectorate  had  taken  root.  Pro- 
fessions of  adhesion  came  in  from  all  the  counties.  Foreign 
powers  recognized  at  once.  Neither  Mazarin  nor  Lewis  de 
Haro  would  have  anything  to  say  to  Charles  Stuart.  The 
royalists  were  passive,  and  when  at  length  they  rose  in 
the  north,  under  Booth,  they  were  easily  put  down. 
Richard  had  shown  folly  and  added  somewhat  to  the  finan- 
cial difficulties  by  giving  his  father  an  enormously  costly 
funeral,  debasing  thereby  the  memory  which  he  intended 
to  exalt.  But  in  his  new  elevation  he  bore  himself  with 
unexpected  dignity.  He  had  Thurloe  to  manage  for  him, 
Broghill  and  other  eminent  men  in  his  councils. 

Thurloe,  managing  for  the  Protectorate,  called  a  parlia-    1658- 
ment.     He  called  it  on  the  unreformed  footing,  with  all 
the  petty  boroughs,  which  he  deemed  more  favourable  to 
the  government  than  the  reformed  ;  a  bad  omen,  as  well  as 


646  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

a  sad  relapse.  The  parliament,  however,  proved  friendly, 
and  in  spite  of  the  desperate  resistance  of  the  irrecon- 
cilable republicans,  the  men,  as  they  styled  themselves,  of 
the  good  old  cause,  recognized  the  Protectorate  and  the 
upper  House.  So  far  Thurloe  and  the  Protectorate  tri- 
umphed. But  close  to  Westminster  and  Whitehall  the 
storm  was  gathering  at  Wallingford  house,  the  residence 
of  Fleetwood,  where  he,  with  Lambert,  Desborough,  and 
other  army  chiefs,  sat  brooding  over  the  memory  of  their 
ascendancy  and  plotting  to  regain  it.  They  demanded  in 
effect  that  Richard  should  give  up  to  them  the  command  of 
the  army ;  in  other  words,  supreme  power.  The  irrecon- 
cilable republicans,  madly  bent  on  overturning  the  Protec- 
torate, leagued  themselves  with  the  malcontent  soldiers. 

Richard,  though  at  first  he  showed  a  sense  of  his  right 
and  duty  as  the  head  of  the  state,  wanted  firmness 
for  steady  resistance,  and  weakly  allowed  a  convention  of 
the  army  to  be  called.  Between  that  convention  and  the 
parliament  a  collision  ensued.  The  army  chiefs  turned 
out  the  parliament  by  force  and  deposed  the  Protector, 
who,  conscious  of  his  own  unfitness  for  command,  was 
1659  ready  enough  to  retire,  with  a  moderate  provision,  into 
private  life.  To  throw  a  decent  veil  over  the  government 
of  the  sword,  the  army  chiefs  recalled  the  Rump,  which 
went  to  work  as  if  all  that  had  occurred  since  Pride's 
Purge  had  been  a  blank.  When  the  Rump  tried  to 
control  them,  they  turned  it  out  again.  Then,  feeling 
that  they  could  not  dispense  with  some  show  of  civil 
government,  they  recalled  it  once  more. 

There  ensued  a  wild  scene  of  dissolution  and  distraction, 
while  political  speculation  was  running  crazy  in  Harring- 
ton's "  Rota  "  Club,  and  Milton,  agonized  by  the  imminent 


xxm  THE  PROTECTORATE  647 

ruin  of  all  his  hopes,  conjured  the  members  of  the  Rump 
frankly  to  assume  the  character  of  a  permanent  govern- 
ment, which,  in  fact,  from  his  point  of  view,  was  the 
best  thing  to  be  done.  The  weakness  of  the  parliament 
throughout  had  been  its  want  of  permanent  character  as  a 
government.  It  appeared  always  as  a  representative  as- 
sembly which  had  lost  its  elective  base  and  feared  to  go  to 
its  constituents. 

General  Monck  was  still  commanding  the  army  of 
occupation  in  Scotland,  where  he  had  continued  to  carry 
out  the  Protector's  policy  well.  He  was  a  man  with 
no  theory,  probably  not  with  much  principle ;  shrewd  and 
silent;  ready  to  serve  any  paymaster,  but  loyal  to  the 
paymaster  whom  he  served.  Of  his  loyalty  to  the  Pro- 
tectorate there  was  no  doubt.  He  had  given  Richard  wise 
counsel,  advising  him  to  make  friends  of  the  moderate 
party  and  reduce  the  army  by  throwing  two  regiments 
into  one,  getting  rid  by  the  way  of  dangerous  spirits 
among  the  officers,  who,  he  assured  him,  when  cashiered, 
would  be  powerless.  He  had  kept  himself  close,  watched 
the  progress  of  anarchy,  opened  communication  with  Fair- 
fax, and  weeded  his  own  army  of  all  upon  whom  he  could 
not  rely.  When  anarchy  reached  its  height  he  moved  on 
London.  There  he  went  through  a  singular  course  of  what  1660 
is  commonly  deemed  dissimulation  and  deceit,  but  may  have 
been  only  wavering.  He  for  some  time  bore  himself  as 
the  loyal  servant  of  the  Rump,  going  so  far  as  to  disman- 
tle, in  obedience  to  its  command,  the  street  defences  of 
Presbyterian  and  now  royalist  London.  Suddenly  he 
turned  round  and,  amidst  the  wildest  enthusiasm  of  the 
city,  declared  for  a  free  parliament.  To  declare  for  a  free 
parliament  was  to  declare  for  a  parliament  in  which, 


648  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP. 

though  Cavaliers  could  not  sit,  men  elected  under  their 
influence  might,  in  which  royalist  Presbyterians  would 
predominate,  and  which  would  certainly  recall  the  king,  a 
general  stampede  to  whom  at  once  set  in. 

i860  Recalled  at  once  by  the  Convention  Parliament  with 
every  appearance  of  national  enthusiasm  the  king  was. 
From  Dover  to  London  Charles  moved  through  a  living 
avenue  of  jubilation.  It  was  a  reaction,  not  against  the 
Protectorate  of  Oliver,  or  even  that  of  Richard,  but  against 
the  military  anarchy  which  had  followed  ;  yet  in  these 
shouts  of  welcome  there  was  much  of  genuine  attachment 
to  monarchy.  One  sign  of  this  was  that  touching  for  the 
king's  evil  began  again  on  a  large  scale.  Such  was  the 
concourse  of  dupes  that  some  were  crushed  to  death.  If 
any  one  was  healed  by  the  hand  of  Mrs.  Palmer's  lover, 
the  power  of  working  miracles  must  have  been  strictly 
attached  to  the  office. 

There  was  the  army  of  the  Commonwealth  still  strong 
enough,  if  it  chose,  to  put  the  veto  of  its  sword  on  the 
Restoration.  Would  it  quietly  allow  everything  for 
which  it  had  fought  and  bled  to  go  by  the  board?  By 
long  service  the  soldier  had  probably  been  made  more  pro- 
fessional and  less  political ;  he  had  shown  indifference,  if 
Evelyn  speaks  the  truth,  at  Cromwell's  funeral.  Monck, 
too,  had  been  weeding  out  dangerous  elements.  But  an 
army,  though  with  a  chief  irresistible,  cannot  act  without 
a  chief,  and  this  army  now  had  none.  So  Cromwell's  vete- 
rans took  their  arrears  of  pay  and  went  back  to  their 
homesteads  or  workshops,  showing  themselves  thereafter 
to  have  been  Ironsides  only  by  their  superior  industry  and 
worth.  "No  other  prince  in  Europe,"  said  Chancellor 
Hyde,  on  the  occasion,  "  would  be  willing  to  disband  such 


xxin  THE   PROTECTOKATE  649 

an  army,  an  army  to  which  victory  is  entailed,  and  which, 
humanly  speaking,  could  hardly  fail  of  conquest  whither- 
soever he  should  lead  it ;  an  army  whose  order  and  disci- 
pline, whose  sobriety  and  manners,  whose  courage  and 
success  hath  made  it  famous  over  the  world."  This,  from 
Hyde's  lips,  is  at  least  the  language  of  genuine  fear. 
These  men,  though  they  dispersed  so  peacefully,  must 
have  hung  their  swords  over  their  hearths,  and  could 
hardly  have  forgotten  Marston,  Naseby,  and  Worcester. 
What  did  they  think  and  say  when  the  corpse  of  their  old 
chief  was  gibbeted  at  Tyburn,  when  their  old  officers 
were  being  hanged  and  quartered  for  treason,  when  vin- 
dictive prelacy  Avas  persecuting  their  religion  and  crowd- 
ing the  prisons  with  the  preachers  on  whose  lips  they  had 
hung  ? 

This  was  the  end  of  Puritanism,  or  of  so  much  of  it  as 
was  mortal,  in  England.  It  could  not  fail,  like  other  great 
moral  movements,  to  leave  traces  on  national  character, 
but  in  its  distinct  and  original  form  it  quits  the  scene. 
In  England  it  lay  vanquished  by  the  traditional  forces, 
which,  though  by  the  preternatural  energy  concentrated 
in  a  resolute  minority  and  a  powerful  chief  it  had  for  a 
time  thrust  them  aside,  closed  upon  it  and  overpowered  it 
in  the  end.  But  on  the  eve  of  the  conflict  in  England  it 
had  placed  itself  beyond  the  chances  of  war.  A  company 
of  peasants  persecuted  by  Laud  and  seeking  an  asylum  for 
their  faith  and  worship  had,  after  undergoing  with  heroic 
constancy  much  suffering  and  discouragement,  founded  a 
little  Commonwealth  on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic. 
Afterwards  a  larger  emigration,  drawn  from  a  higher  class 
and  led  by  a  landed  gentleman,  had  founded,  by  the  side 
of  the  original  colony,  one  more  properly  called  Puritan, 


650  THE   UNITED   KINGDOM  CHAP,  xxin 

the  original  colony  having  been  really  Independent.  To 
this  Sir  Henry  Vane  and  other  leading  spirits  of  the  Puri- 
tan party,  groaning  under  the  tyranny  of  Charles  and 
Laud,  had  been  drawn  or  turned  their  thoughts,  when  the 
revolution,  breaking  out  in  England,  gave  them  work 
enough  and  hope  at  home.  The  founders  of  a  republic  on 
the  bleak  and  lonely  shore  of  Massachusetts  had  not  to 
contend  with  a  superstitious  reverence  for  monarchy,  a 
deeply  rooted  aristocracy,  or  a  powerful  prelacy ;  their 
drawback  was  the  religious  narrowness  contracted  in  the 
English  struggle  which  led  them  to  confine  their  common- 
wealth to  a  sect,  and  even  presently  to  become  persecutors 
in  their  turn.  Though  in  the  end  Puritanism  was  fated 
here  also  to  die,  the  republic  lived,  not  without  traces  of 
the  Puritan  character,  some  of  which  are  discernible  per- 
haps even  at  the  present  day.  In  New  England  there  was 
no  Restoration.  There,  in  the  day  of  Cavalier  vengeance, 
the  hunted  regicide  found  shelter  and  has  left  his  memory 
in  the  Judge's  Cave.  The  statue  of  Cromwell,  rejected  at 
Westminster,  might,  if  the  Irish  vote  were  not  in  the  way, 
be  fitly  set  up  at  Washington. 


END  OP  VOLUME  I 


,C  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARV  FACILITY 


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